Showing posts with label Raspberry Pi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Raspberry Pi. Show all posts

Saturday, February 10, 2018

RTL-SDR Dongle interference shield/filter

Happy New Year!
I'll try this year to post more project's, (at least one for each month) and some more simple ones in the middle, that including the failed experiments (I do have them).

Said so, here's, with some delay, the first post for this year!

I had the RTL-SDR USB dongle for some time working but wanted to box it up and placed together with the Raspberry Pi already boxed up.
In the process wanted to eliminate some of the noise it was receiving. Keep in mind that even with noise it was working acceptable (just wanted it mostly for ADS-B and possible AIS reception).

So, decided to do some simple filtering and placed it on a full metal box.

In order to know the filter/shielding was working correctly, that is, the design was improving reception I used the QspectrumAnalyser Linux software to get the signal data in a small band subset and then compare on the several stages during filtering/boxing.

The final result of the build is this:

The noise reduction part is by the end of the post.

Here's already with the Raspberry Pi:
And the live feed with a random piece of wire as inside house antenna:

During build:


After connecting to the Raspberry was getting USB disconnects but not if I used it on the Laptop, after twisting together the USB signals cable (green and white ones) it stopped doing the behavior.

And fully boxed:


Now the good part, the schematic for the filtering:
I was looking for ideas here and here , were not tested since I started building the above circuit and it worked first time, to be fair there's nothing that can go wrong with it.

Here the several stages of interference reduction:

1 - With Just a 100uH in series with the power positive:

 2 - With the output capacitor after the inductor, we can see a big reduction:

3 -Here's me holding the USB ground terminal to the box, I am the antenna!
4 -Then soldered the USB ground to the box
5 - With the full PI circuit, much better:
6 -With everything connected, except for the top lid of the box.
7 - Final signal levels with box fully closed:

Additionaly some experiments in logging data from the dump1090 software:

I'll probably do in the future a a small post on that.

In the mean time have a great 2018!





















Sunday, November 19, 2017

Raspberry Pi in a new box

Some times I just want things done, on some other occasions I prefer to do it correctly...or at least I try!
 That was what happened to the previous box for my Raspberry Pi, just needed some cover so devised this cheap box:



Now it's time to improve a little bit and place it on a more definite location, this was what I come up to (still going to include a front switch to disable video and power to the small display):


Inside: the Pi with it's power supply (wall unit without terminals) and one to  power the video screen (the transformer, diode rectifier and an LM7812 using as dissipator part of the crystal filter box that I butchered in a previous post.):



Still not sure on the placement of the screen since it would go nice on the front panel, problem is; being a little higher than the box.

The back panel where the magic happens:

Pi Ethernet port, USB ports, video and power out for the screen, power switch and mains entrance. Might include later on the front panel a shutdown button.

The plan for this Raspberry is to have it permanently connect to an SDR dongle doing reception work and then access it via another computer.

Have fun!

Monday, March 14, 2016

Pi day and the Pi blade server

It looks today is Pi day, it also looks like nowadays everyday is day of something...

In any case will share here my Pi in blade server version....

The Pi was supposed to be inside another box to be used as an SDR receiver but didn't liked the DVB card quality (RF wise) and now was converted to a NAS...

Keep in mind this is the Raspberry and not the Pi constant with approx value of:  3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105
(give it or take)

On to the most interesting photos:

The full enclosure:

 Power supply:
The disk array (external storage):
Chassis interconnect:
Power line and boot device slot:
Easy access for maintenance:
The CPU blade:






.... so now you know how to get your blade chassis... in the nearest poundo shop for arround 1.5 Eur...

Have a nice week!