I get the same results on the hood, and also on a picnic table when tried at another spot.
As mentioned above I only included the “inside” photos here because it was cold out when I was taking the shots, but I’ve used the same basic process to determine pointing when I’ve made my other attempts, it was just that today I concluded I had been doing it correctly in the past. The location I’m at is a street outside my office, so my previous attempts are the same spot, and once in a different parking lot far away.
can you try unplugging and replugging the SDR? Are you using a USB extension cable? Also, if its an RPI 3 please use another usb port and lets see if thats it.
Roger that. I have a version running on RPI as well. It “sounds” like the RPI flash may be bad and needs to be reloaded with the latest version of the RPI fork… I say that because I believe the RPI is having a bad time with the SDR being recognized.
btw, if you connect the rtl-sdr up to sdr# does it work?
ki4its and others are computer data wizards and I’m a wire twister so I’ll step out of the way on the computer issues,
However, your patch looks like it’s pointed too high. Once you are talking with your receiver
( ki4its and others are helping with that) , please have a look at this quick pointing guide from the good people at Inmarsat/BGAN.
My location is used as an example, because we have similar latitudes.
Looking at the patch antenna in your car, elevation seems too high for such a northern latitude. Hold the patch perpendicular -that is - edge down toward the ground and THEN tilt it back only 32* so the flat is broadside to 32* above the horizon.
I’m using rxos-rpi3-image-v3.1-201610302354+81529a dowloaded today… same results as before…
Below is a screenshot from “Gqrx” which is an SDR program for Mac OSX with my USB SDR dongle plugged directly into my Mac, the LNA direct to the SDR and the patch antenna connected directly to LNA. The patch (and other stuff) is on the hood of my car, so it’s free air and clear view to the sky (pointed at 98W and angled about 30-45* relative to horizon)…
Looks like no signals, but what’s surprising is how high the noise floor is! Over -60dFBS – is that normal?
so right now there is probably nothing Powering the bias-t voltage. not sure about gqrx but I know in SDR# you can enable the bias-t for the AIRSPY SDR at least. not sure if it shows up as a setting for this sdr.
That is a pretty high noise floor. Can you tune to some other frequencies like FM stations around your?
Also, please remove the 6" usb cable and plug the sdr directly into the rpi. tell me if your noise floor changes
Also throw a small regular antenna on just the SDR with no PA and see if you receive in another band. Sanity check the SDR. Try an FM radio station, that would tell you for sure.
Hello! Just curious please try Mac with SDR - ANT connected w/o LNA. I am sure when you point ANT you will be able to see some signals. Thats what happens with me.
Sorry for the lack of replies here–turns out new users aren’t allowed to post more than a certain number of posts per day, and then I got busy with other things.
In the meantime, I ordered a new LNA, antenna and SDR dongle… They work!
So there’s something in my old receiving chain that is broken, I’ll swap out the parts one by one until I figure which part it is.
I just re-flashed my chip. I changed the settings from access point, to join a network. It did join the network, but the web page was blank. Anyway, I was not getting much of a signal at all, and I found that if I changed the satellite entry, I needed to press that ‘apply’ button at the bottom of the frame. Made all the difference.
How fast we forget weather effects on our system when they sit and work well for many days. Rain here on East coast has been off and on for several days resulting in pooling of water atop (toward the front edge) my Lantern protector.
After removing it, my SNR (and related Rssi) jumped 4 dB - - SNR went from an average of 4 to an average of 8. Can’t wait to see what snow will do
In the mean time, I’m modifying my cover so the top slopes steeply down by cutting the sides and front accordingly… Ken
I had to chip the ice off mine yesterday. My antenna is inside a small lunch box - propped up. I have an sachet of silica gel inside it to keep inside dry …
so I’ll step out of the way on the computer issues,
