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Will it work without the GPS antenna?
in General Chat
I do not have a good skyview from my desktop. Can I still run it?
Comments
Hi @W1RC of cours KiwiSDR work without GPS antenna, but some feature like TDoA or correction of ADC clock cannot be used. If you don't connect antenna to your KiwiSDR disable all satilite networks (Navstar, QZSS, Galileo) on the Admin - GPS tab.
I also have a question. Will it work without a GPS chip? Or without powering the GPS chip.
@W1RC You might want to do a manual frequency calibration. Instructions are on the admin page, bottom of the "config" tab.
You might want to do this if you find the ADC XO is far enough off-frequency, due to room temperature, its intrinsic crystal cut value or whatever, that for example the HFDL decoder won't decode signals because its PLL can't lock (it can withstand only about a 40 Hz error).
@studentkra The GPS's ~16 MHz clock is always used as a reference for the FPGA eCPU and a few other things. This is done to make the GPS parts of the FPGA easier to synchronize. See the Kiwi design review paper and the Verilog code. Because the eCPU always runs, even when the GPS isn't being used, the 16M clock always needs to be there. You could remove this dependency and do something else. But you'd have to change the Verilog.
@jks, thanks! I'am "full zero" in FPGA programming)))
Yeah, I was too 9 years ago. Zero at: FPGA, Verilog, HTML, SDR, GPS, PCB layout, DFM, fund raising, contract manufacturing, everything! That's why the Kiwi will always be a little "rough" around the edges, lol
I admire your energy and learning capabilities at your age. No mocking at all, I am in my middle age and the prospect to learn all of that would be scary.