Or just buy it assembled and save 10 cents.

I'd buy an oscilloscope asap.

Hey on the Ham and ask a friend.

THIS, oscilloscopes can tell you things multimeters cant.

But can it tell you why kids love the taste of cinnamon toast crunch?

You coulkd be right, I've never hooked a kid to an oscilloscope.

Yeah, double post, but I couldn't do a Youtube, above, with the quote.





Seriously though...get an Oscilloscope and make an Octopus for it. This video shows the very basics. The true value of an Octopus is that ANY variations in the lines, will point out a partially bad component, which the multimeter wont.






By way of example...






/e Works similarly for the various PN junctions in transistors. Only the line won't be a 90 degree angle, with a partially bad transistor.

This post was edited by Ghot on Aug 13 2014 07:59pm

Capacitor was just an example...nothing beats a O'scope n Octopus for troubleshooting a component.

Bought some new hardware, fixed a few things, and preparing to build some more.

For the new hardware that is on the way I have bought a LNA low noise amplifier that amplifies 30mhz to up to 1ghz signals (+- a wider band of mhz) up to 18-23 decibels of gain. That is almost 7 times the signal you would get just from an antenna (every 3 decibels you double your signal). I have also bought a up converter which takes HF signals (0mhz to 30mhz) and converts them via a oscillator to be in the 125mhz area. This allows software defined radios to be able to access the HF bands where all the cool data is like PSK, FSK, CW, digital slow scan tv, Air Fax, and more.

As for fixing a few things I replaced the coax on my antenna from this shitty old rg-59 50ohm coax to rg6 75ohm coax. I can't use the rg6 coax to tx on my 40 meter (7mhz) antenna I made, but since my CW transceiver is broken and I haven't been bothered to salvage for parts and rebuilt my own I decided to put low loss coax on it for RX only. This instantly cleared up the signals on my SDR where before they were few and very weak, to now I am getting shit on by pagers close by which interfere with other signals.

And finally as for building new things... I am designing a case for all my software radio gear (sdr, upconverter, low noise amplifier) which will be made of hopefully milled aluminum. The case will help lower the external noise that the radio gear would pick up which results in cleaner signals. With the case there will be metal RF cans which go over top of the hardware in order to prevent contamination inside the case from the hardware interfering with each other. I will also be designing a USB splitter PCB which will take a incoming USB line (choked on a ferrite ring to reduce noise) and split it into 3 molex connectors. The main purpose besides splitting the power to the hardware inside is to filter the USB power coming from the computer which is really noisy. On the PCB there will be filtering caps and switches to turn specific hardware on/off at will.

Here is one design that I came up with which I will most likely change as I source parts for it: http://i.imgur.com/14XO0Nz.png

The image is 4 molex connectors, one for incoming USB from the computer, One which splits the voltage and data for the SDR, then two others which just splits the voltage to power the hardware. The switches have two states, either on for the hardware to turn off, or off which turns the LED on to signal that the device is turned off.

I might buy some actual shielded USB headers instead of using the molex but we will see. I need to see what parts I can gather before I finalize any PCB layout.

/e You're gonna make a robot, next?

This post was edited by Ghot on Aug 27 2014 11:16pm