News
I wanted to give you a quick update on the radio telescope development.
I've just received some new RF components that I'll be installing over the next few days.
These comprehend:
• Various SMA cables and connectors
• Noolec SawBird+ H1 LNA
• RTL-SDR Blog V3 (should be here tomorrow)
Also, I started designing the Feed Antenna of the dish. Basically, a can-antenna
designed to have a lower cut-off frequency of 1212MHz and an upper cut-off
frequency of 1582MHz.
[link to the design tool]
Noolec SawBird+ H1 LNA
Nooelec SAWbird+ H1 is a SAW Filter & Ultra-Low Noise Amplifier (LNA) Module for
Hydrogen Line (21cm) applications with a center frequency of 1420MHz.
Some key features of this LNA are:
• +40dB of RF gain at 1420MHz
• 0.8dB noise figure at 1420MHz
• +3.3V-5V single supply
If you don’t know what an LNA is you should check out this link. I will upload a more detailed document in the “Insights” section of the repository on GitHub where I’ll talk about LNAs.
[link to this LNA datasheet]
RTL-SDR Blog V3
The RTL-SDR Blog V3 is a key component in our project setup. It's essentially a software-defined radio (SDR) dongle built around the Realtek RTL2832U chipset.
Widely adopted by hobbyists and professionals, it serves a range of purposes, from radio monitoring to spectrum analysis and amateur radio activities.
Its affordability and compatibility with open-source software make it an ideal choice for my project's needs. I will post more insights on this device as the project evolves.
My idea is to write Python code to read data from this dongle to enable more interesting data processing.
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