waiting on the quantum computer and nuclear reactor (made from trash) episode !

@hunterdixonrickthewalkingd6567

Ай бұрын

😂😂😂😂😂

@gkcnalaka

Ай бұрын

😂😂

@saveitforparts

Ай бұрын

I keep meaning to make a radiation detector out of cold packs and alcohol, that's been on the list forever!

@thebroshow6688

Ай бұрын

@@saveitforparts i think a cloud chamber would rock. Get some radioactive material from the trinity site and stick that in there with your cold war stuff!

@Allan_aka_RocKITEman

Ай бұрын

​@@thebroshow6688>>> I actually thought of _Cloud Chamber_ as well.

"It's a nice rainy day today" he said with a smile on his face. You are such a breath of fresh air man. Your positive energy draws me to your videos as much if not more than the cool stuff you're doing.

@ryanfrogz

Ай бұрын

With how dry the last few years have been around here, any rain is a welcome sight!

@rubenskiii

Ай бұрын

@@ryanfrogz here it's the other way around, days and days of rain and thunder. The slugs have taken over the country!

@kevinstewart8

Ай бұрын

So true 💯

@olleinsulander

Ай бұрын

Couldn´t agree more! He is such a nice guy!

Your audio when you were on the house roof was great.

Hahaha the breakdown of that instruction card thing had me absolutely rolling.

@dougtaylor7724

Ай бұрын

I concur.

@coreyrobinson9010

Ай бұрын

@@dougtaylor7724 "Indeed."

@dougtaylor7724

Ай бұрын

Every video it’s like Oh shit, what’s next?

I am sure I have said it before but it bears repeating, I appreciate the fact you show the learning process. So many times I will watch a video and it will make something look easy and then I try and there are 15 things the video doesn't talk about that could go wrong or that you need to know before you can get something to work. Your videos show the reality of trial and error and the real frustrations of doing something that hasn't been done before or in a new way.

@saveitforparts

Ай бұрын

I probably still don't show ALL the errors, that would make for a 2hr video! I do try to cover major problems along the way though!

@SawdustSoftwareSiliconChippy

Ай бұрын

I agree. We get to see, not all goes to plan, but success can be achieved, with some effort. Something that we don't usually get to see, and then wonder why we (ourselves) can't get the same results. Because the realities have been edited out, our expectations become unrealistic, only guaranteeing disappointments, and frustrations. Your candid examples, are great! Cheers. 👍

7-zip is a great piece of software. The images off the satellites looks awesome, love the animations from those.

The only person who can make an instruction sheet seem like a great weekend in April!

Polarity, polarity, a polarising problem! I can only imagine how with the mix of linear and circular polarised signals in your part of the world how often it gets overlooked or confused. Looking forward to seeing you eventually get stuck into experimenting with custom & modified waveguides, dielectrics, and all that fun shit. 😸 Thanks for the interesting content mate!

As a satcom guy for my job, I agree with the satcom includes luck, though, I'd say it's 60% luck and 40% math. Great video!

Hahahaha holy shit, those wheelie stairs on top of your car. Outstanding! I haven’t laughed out loud so hard at a KZread video in a long time. Man, just getting it done. 10/10.

@gorak9000

Ай бұрын

He's gonna get hop-ons for sure...

Fantastic video - a little radio, a little linux, a wild ansible appearance, a mouse, and roofing education! 😅 Thanks!

As a professional RF engineer Ive got to say: WELL DONE!

13:50 if it was previously at ground level then it's likely a rock-hole from a lawnmower/weed eater. My grandfolks had one for Satellite TV from the 90's and, once proper cable was available, they abandoned it. the lower edge was chewed to hell before too many years from rocks kicked up while mowing.

@saveitforparts

Ай бұрын

This one was up on a pole above someone's back yard, I got it for free in exchange for taking it down. It didn't seem like the type of neighborhood for stray bullets, but could have been a kid with a slingshot or pellet gun!

Those SDR modules were designed to receive satellite TV signals and were shipped with a 75 ohm European PAL connector. 50 ohm is used for power matching for transmitters or transceivers, 75 and 93 Ohm coax has lower losses so they are used for receivers and video cabling. The old C-band equipment used very expensive and large 50 ohm coax at 3.9 to 4.2 GHz. Thad fed 50 Ohm power dividers to feed the RF to multiple receivers in a CATV head end. If you use a C or kU band down converter, you connect it with 75 Ohm coax. RG6 or better coax was specified for this, because it has a lower capacitance per foot. RG62, 93 Ohm coax was used for AM car radios, since they were a voltage probe, rather than a traditional antenna. This was coupled to a parallel tuned circuit in the radio to maximize gain. This is why those radios had a trimmer capacitor that was used to maximize reception at the top end of the AM band. If you really want to set the feed properly on that dish, you need a signal source that you can aim the dish at. Then you adjust the focal length for maximum signal. A standard florescent lamp generates RF welll past 4GHz. I would wave a LNA or LNB across one at my bench to see if it had any gain before fuly testing and repairing them. A lot of them had a bad 78L05 or 7805 Voltage regulator so they were easy to repair. How did you determine the diameter for the feed horn? It is basically used a a short section of waveguide. www.everythingrf.com/tech-resources/waveguides-sizes shows yoy the proper dimensions for each range: There are C-band WR-137 waveguide flange to "N" adapters that might work OK, I made mine from some damaged LNAs, but here is a commercial unit to see how they are built. I measure the length of the probe, then soldered it to the N connector before I bolted it to the casting. I used them to repair C-band RF modules for several years. I would pay $2 for dead modules, but most were easy to repair. I converted a crap RL Drake tunable down converter to a C-band signal generator. I fed it video, coupled into the tuning voltage to modulate it. I now have an extremely rare Microdyne C-band test set for this. It was built for production testing and may be the only one surviving. www.fairviewmicrowave.com/wr137-type-n-female-waveguide-coax-adapter-cmr-137-fmwca1049-p.aspx?gad_source=1 We had an HF/VHF antenna lab on the roof of the old Cincinnati Electronics building where they tested designs for military radios. We also had a 100 foot shipboard RADAR dish leaning up against the building that had been used to test military RADAR equipment when it was a Crosley, then an AVCO defense plant. I did QA testing on the PRC77 Manpack VHF radios when I worked there. I joked that if I could get it home to use it for satellite TV that it was bigger than my house but I wouldn't need a LNA because of its gain at 4GHz.

@saveitforparts

Ай бұрын

That's cool! You've got a lot more experience with this than I do, I just poke around with old junk until it works. I tend to use the GOES satellite as my fixed source, although the way this antenna is mounted makes it hard to reach the feed without swinging it back over the roof. The cantenna is left over from one of my earlier experiments with GOES, I followed some calculation guides online for a 1.7ghz waveguide and feed. Similar to the old 2.4ghz Pringles cans for WiFi, just larger. There are probably better and more efficient feeds I could make, I might play with it more in the future or try to upgrade to GRB reception with a circular feed. Lots of stuff on the to-do list :-)

@michaelterrell

Ай бұрын

@@saveitforparts I worked in TV Broadcast, CATV and manufacturing of Military and Telemetry equipment. I started out workroom with salvaged parts before I was 10. At 13 I went to work in a TV shop after school, so I started buying some tools, and new parts so I spent less time on each project. One of the links I provided shows diameter/frequency for circular waveguide, along with their cutoff frequencies. You can mount more than one feed horn on a dish, for different bands. The offset may require a slight re aiming of the dish and will cause a very slight loss in gain. Back in my CATV days there was the Simulsat dish that could hold around a dozen feed horns and didn't require it to be re aimed This let a system receive every C-band satellite they needed with that single dish.

@kd9kck376

Ай бұрын

Actually the rtlsdr blog branded sdrs have a 50 Ohm connector on it.

@michaelterrell

Ай бұрын

@@kd9kck376 What connector?

@kd9kck376

Ай бұрын

@@michaelterrell All RTLSDR Blog branded ones use normal SMA connector.

It really does add to the appeal for your property. I'd like something like that on my roof too

"Despite my best efforts my property values keep going up." 😆Keep up the good fight. (:

RF is at least 30% black magic. And I say that as someone who worked with RF for over 40 years...

@saveitforparts

Ай бұрын

That's what I've gotten from it, even working with Wifi was always some % tech and some % magic.

A TV with local channel reception is good to have as another information source during emergencies. I have a TV that is primarily used with a streaming box, but it is hooked up to an antenna and I run a channel rescan every couple months.

Adding the plastic pallets to the roof is a good idea, it will extend the life of your roof membrane. You might consider adding a ground strap or an ESD static dissipating matt to the pallets.

Standoffs made from hot glue and wire nuts! Love it!

you are so happy all the time, you are so positive all the time, youre great!

Hey man, I love your channel. I would honestly prefer the trial and error that you film as opposed to a step by step because it feels like we are working on this project with you haha. Honestly your videos are always awesome and you have gotten me to want to get into HAM Radio and AM SAT. Also if you want something to dehumidify the inside of the electronics box but not need power, you can try silica beads. Not exactly sure whether they can suck up a LOT of moisture but it could be better than nothing. Only thing would be replacing them every now and then.

Put cat litter in a sock, instead of the dehumidifier, change it once in a while, it will remove some of the moist from the air. Nice video, love your approach, I do things the same way, a lot of trial and error 😊

“60% math and 40% luck” is an accurate description of pleasing the RF gods

I like how you do things just like I do: reuse old parts and buy the fewer possible lol

@ 1:30 you should label that big jar......."NOT BOOZE" to protect the lil neighborhood urchins. Thanks for another great upload. Those pics that came in look great!! 😎👍

You did a nice job! And I love the c band dish too. I have a dish 500 and 2 directv satellites for free tv

Your humor and the fun you have is so contagious!! I just love your projects!!

If you got some old heat sinks flying around, i am sure you got some in your collection xD, just glue (thermal adhesive recommended) some small one on the Raspberry Pi chip (silver in the center) to increase lifetime. Especially the rpi 4 tends to overheat. If you got a small 5v fan you can just connect to the 2 power pins and make it even better.

17:43 It doesn't matter. The mismatch loss without impedance matching between 75 and 50 Ohms is 0.18 dB, corresponding to a forward power of 96% or a reflected power of 4%. Which is insignificant.

You can power the RPi over the GPIO 5v header pins and a few other points without having a wobbly USB cable attached. There are a few points you can solder to for a permanent wire that wont jank.

Great Video.. So much Deja Vue for me, my first house back in the Mid 80's had a flat roof on an extension that as a newly minted Ham Radio op I immediately saw as potential for antennas. Hauling that C band dish up reminded me of the day I decided to stick a scaffolding pole to brackets on the back of my house over the flat roof and then put up a stack array of 2 meter Yagi antenna, it was a lot of danger and no small amount of muscle and shear will power that saw success rather than any plan or attention to safety. Good luck and please continue to produce the content you do for as long as you can.

Yeah, your wireless lavalier mic sounds great 👍

Great Video as usual , I like the way you do things I basically do the same. I will suggest you add a HEAT Sink to the Raspberry PI It will help a lot with keeping it cooler. Keep it up , thanks.

Love the antenna farm and I'm glad to see the old C-band dish go up. The audio on the roof sounded great to me. Can't wait to see more

Get a POE hat for the pi or a POE to USB adaptor. Then just one network cable up to the roof for power and data. Hopefully I can start on some of my satellite and lora projects too.

@saveitforparts

Ай бұрын

I just bought one of those, haven't tried one before.

@JamesHalfHorse

Ай бұрын

@@saveitforparts POE opens up a lot of options. There are the cheapies that grab unused pairs in the network cables or ones that are actually the 802.11 whatever (af?) that gives it some smarts. If it's real POE you are only limited by the wattage of the port. For example you can use a power injector on the ground up to a POE powered switch on the roof. It will supply power to the PI hat and you can get a poe to usb adaptor to power the LNA. Honestly if you put the PI's in cases with fans or a passive heatsink case you can probably get away with not needing the dehumidifier. Toss a desiccant pack or two in there. What I usually do for similar outdoor equipment. This will get any AC power out of the box on the roof and away from your antennas. Even if you don't go POE I would consider using a 12 volt DC power supply on the ground and convert it to whatever is needed on the roof using ali buck/boost converters. Don't be afraid of putting ferrites and stuff on the cables as well to knock down noise

Try getting a metal project box to mount the Pi in. You're correct about the RF interference. It can make some seriously unwanted effects on your signal.

I want a compilation of all the "what? why?!" of that week long debugging

The wireless mic. actually sounded ok. It was picking up the traffic noise, but you were clear. Now you've got it (the dish) working, it's very impressive. Well done!

Some thoughts: As to dehumidifying the electronics enclosure, check it is as dry as possible to begin with and a big Silica Gel pack inside and regular inspection and it should be keeping it decently dry. Remember how to "recharge" Silica Gel packs (oven just over 100°C (212°F), let dry out for a couple of hours), if you can get packs with indicator color, it's a plus. As to antenna cable, check out fatter 50 Ω cable, similar or thicker than the TV antenna cable (check manufacturers data sheets for losses at frequencies of interest). You will need coax connector adapters. Clamp-on ferrites if you suspect interference fed through the USB power lines.

Attach bolts screws through the base of the pole so the cement can grab onto the pole better Eric.

@saveitforparts

Ай бұрын

I did put some in, not sure if I showed that!

@gardenfork

Ай бұрын

@@saveitforparts I’m wondering how you could ground the plastic pallets. Probably not Possible.

@saveitforparts

Ай бұрын

Yeah, maybe rubber over the top, or hardware cloth and then ground that? I'm not sure either!

I'm with you on getting a good signal from Goes. The problem I have is that my dish is only 3ft. I used cardboard and foil tape to make it 42" and just barely got a partial image at one point. My best SNR was about 6dBi. I've made lots of feedhorns and the top 2 designs were a dipole with a 6"x8" curved reflector and the other was a 3 element yagi. I swear I could get a great signal with a 7ft dish.......ugh. Keep up the videos, you are my only inspiration to get Goes to work for me.

@saveitforparts

Ай бұрын

Hopefully you can find a bigger dish around! I've heard 3ft is about the minimum size you need, if everything else is perfect (feed, alignment, etc).

75 ohm cable is supposed to be used for TV, but it works just fine for AM, SW and FM and UHF frequencies higher than TV.

you have no idea how excited to see someone else having the same issues with the noaav2 that I have. I made the mistake of upgrading to bookworkm and boy did that break a ton of things.

I really need to build a better antenna, the idea to get satelite images yourself is so intriguing.

Thank you Sir. Truly enjoy your videos

Love the huge dish, that's so awesome

Every EE I've ever met who worked with E&M guys said that E&M is black magic and antenna guys are wizards

only thing I would have done differently was to not have the usb power bricks in the box as those usually make alot of rf interference. to fix the power issues, the PI has a +5 and ground pins on the gpio that you can wire the 5v supply to directly. most of the power issues I have run into is just the crappy usb micro b.

I really enjoy these videos about satellites. This is the best weather to work on the antenna-anyone can do it in the sunshine. I run a Raspberry Pi 5 with the adapter board and a 1 TB SSD M.2 2280 PCIe NVMe. The Raspberry Pi 5 also boots from the SSD, which makes it very fast and provides plenty of space for many pictures. Updates are installed very quickly. I have Cura running on the Raspberry Pi 5 and use it to slice my 3D objects, which works super fast. I am always very happy when I see the joy and enthusiasm you bring to the projects, and now the antenna mast is supporting the house. Now the storm can come; the house is safe. 👍

11:46 Dude you absolutely crack me up !!! that is awesome. Love the can do spirit ! Always wondered if the factory roof racks could actually hold anything.

@saveitforparts

Ай бұрын

I have carried so much dumb stuff on those roof racks... I'm not actually sure if they're OEM or not, I think I just got cheap ones from Amazon. The car is all scratched up, but I don't care what it looks like as long as it's useful.

The amount of energy you have is frightening.

@saveitforparts

Ай бұрын

Ha, I feel like I never have enough to finish all the projects I start 😂

'''TAXES''' hahaha loved the instructions

I would just about give you free rent on a house and shop I have just to watch you for entertainment. Every new video I think to myselfWhat is that young man up to now? Your wife must be the most easy going person in the world. Mine would run my ass off if I did this stuff. Keep it coming!

I've got to do a GOES setup at some point, love all the detailed imagery and meteorological info. This setup of yours is looking very nice!

Nice satellite dish. I used to have a dish farm I had a 10 foot Horizon to Horizon dish that gave me most of Europe and all of America

This is so cool and inspiring!

very cool stuff man

Great content, funny, informative, and high quality!!

That is really cool! I love your videos!

you can get vents for enclosures like that with a one-way water permeable membrane that fit in a knockout plug; they're more expensive than free but worth it. I've got a GORE PMF100321 on the waterproof enclosure that holds the ESP32, battery, and solar charge controller for my weather station and it's never had issues with condensation forming on the clear bottom lid despite the relatively high average humidity here, and large temperature swings.

So much room for activities!

Man I'm jealous! That's the setup I been trying to accomplish, along with airplane tracking. Congrats Dude!

11:57 "Yeah this is grate!" I love you, man.

Later this summer if you find you're having overheating issues, build a tornado box around that case where every side has a 1in vertical slot running the height of the box on the far left of each side to circulate air. Be aware the wasps are gonna love it though.

waiting for the "homemade iss station made from trash" episode!

@saveitforparts

Ай бұрын

I did some ISS repeater stuff in another video. I have parts around for a yagi pointing system for hamsats, still need to find time to assemble that.

I like watching your projects and you've helped me in some of mine without knowing it.

happy to see that big dish finally being used ^~^

@saveitforparts

Ай бұрын

Me too, except now I need to find a home for the grey dish that's even larger!

when you said you wanted to upgrade that raspberry pi and software i immediately thought "no way that'll go smoothly"

“The neighbors love it and it’s increased my property value!!”

4:20 oh my god he said the line

Rain, what rain? It's liquid sunshine! 😆 Great idea using the plastic pallets. However, the pallets will be pressing the stones through the tar. My suggestion, sweep away the gravel, to place large concrete paver (smooth side down), to support the pallets at the corners, allowing the pressure/weight to be supported on large and flat footprints, of the pavers. That should prevent, any penetration of the tar (IMO) Another great presentation, where perseverance wins! Awesome and inspiring! And the pictures (satellite) are great! 😍

love your videos

Awesome work and video! :D I do the same - try not to buy anything new, and see what I can build from old parts I have. btw, at 16:53 - that looks like USB noise to me. I've had that problem lots of times too, and one thing you could try is to get a long USB cable to connect the sdr, wrap it around a toroid ferrite core or any ferrite core - more turns better, but too much also might stop helping, so like 3 to 5, maybe 10.

Love your videos, have been watching you for a while :) Audio on the roof was a lot better this time, still could probably lower the gain a bit. Sounds like it is still clipping gently.

To prevent static electric charge from the plastic pallets you could put rubber mats on top or them to prevent that from happening, 😁😁😁😁

11:08 this feels like the start of a flex seal commercial

Yea, the pallets will work for you. Ideally, when you find enough salvaged wood a nice salvaged wood deck sitting on the pallets along with some deck chairs would be sweet. Food for thought, use your Nano Vna to check your antenna system for issues. I've found using my Nano Vna that I used old coax that had water ingress that destroyed it having a 50 ohm characteristc impedance. I also had a mucked up transformer that mucked up things. I think impedance matching is pretty important. When its off enough its like trying to start from a dead stop a car in 5th gear. But, 75 ohm instead of 50 ohm I think would give you if otherwise perfect a 1.5 for reflected power that as I remember is under a 10 % loss. So, not to big of a deal.....

15:51 It's good to know your antenna mast is well grounded! That's a plus right? You local tv channel weather folks can come to you if their stuff ever goes (no pun intended) down. This is very awesome!

Love the content! Keep it up!

You have something like 30dB of gain ahead of your coax cable. It *IS* lossy, but with plenty of gain ahead of it, that loss won't matter much. The SNR of your system, when there's an LNA "up front' is almost completely defined by the characteristics of the LNA--it's noise figure, and gain. See "Friis: Noise Chain Analysis". The loss of the cable between the LNA output and your RTL-SDR receiver won't matter until it's getting close to the same magnitude as the gain on your LNA. 10-15m of RG6 at GOES frequencies will be just fine. After all, they use RG6 in satellite TV systems as well, and they work just fine.

THIS IS SO COOL!

Great video🤙🏼

to LNA OR Not to LnA, great work as always like the neew stairs. gets you closer to the hevens. i like how you say roouf roof. im shure if i acccent like aussies do you would sa you talk diffent

Yay “automated”! It’d be so cool if it was like, self contained like a satellite, working for decades with low maintenance. Idk it’s just a cool thing to me.

@saveitforparts

Ай бұрын

I'm considering doing a self-contained system at Sandland that's solar powered and uses one of my weird old tablets to display downloaded data.

@hoteny

Ай бұрын

@@saveitforparts I would be very interested in watching such a video, and a “look back” once a few months / years have passed even.

Also, using a common mode choke on the usb cable solved the interference issues I had

@aarongriffin81

Ай бұрын

Same, I used the clam shell clip-on ferrite beads and it helped get rid of computer noise. I used the ferrites very near the PC to prevent the noise from entering the USB cable. I'm not sure where the best location is for the ferrite beads. While I was at it, I clamped a bunch of them on AC adapters and other USB cables.

Great to see the mesh dish up ! i have the same type in my back yard for the same use ,i think the focal problem could be H to V positioning of the dipole in the cantenna so can you rotate it ? The static problem could be some thing else ! we once had a old home and the wiring in the kitchen had been cut by the last owner and one end of the maiins wire was touching some plumbing so the house was live ! touching ground and the wrong metal some thing that was live would give you a kick alright ! touch the roof and ground with your multimeter on AC 200V and see if its what you would expect for your mains socket .

@saveitforparts

Ай бұрын

I did try rotating the cantenna a bit, the skew is supposed to be offset slightly and it does get better results if I match that.

RE: your errors with trying to load a new / updated OS. You mentioned power supply issues, I would also consider maybe the SD card didnt do well in the heat of the box. I wouldve tried a new SD. Glad you got it working though! EDIT: never mind, you replaced it all lol

The Sea of red error message looked beautiful

"mostly made from trash" wait, i didnt know you made this out of me?

LOLOL! Another great video! All the talk about raspberry pi made me run down to Kwik Trip and get pie & ice cream! Keep up the good work!

The RMS deviation from a true parabola needs to be less than about 1/10th of a wavelength. Dings and dents in the mesh are much less serious at L-band frequencies than actual bent ribs. That would be nearly-fatal, so to speak.

Yeah, I tried automating a system using a raspberry pi but it's just to frustrating, I ended up getting one of those HP elitedesk G2 mini PCs with a windows instalation and Satdump. Much better!

damn thats so cool man

Oh you have one of those old galaxy satellite dishes.... You should build something to ease drop on ISS. See if you can get their video feeds.

nice progress bundling all antennas on 1 roof, adding a grounding rod would be wise or at least an inline protection. you can stick small coolers on the pis, helps in longterm or intense sessions. 73

I worked on many satellite programs over the years...for weather if you cant get through NOAA try the DMSP constellation and or GOES as you have shared it tracks more then weather and been around for 50 years... I worked on it for a long time each country has their own version and or sharing information data good luck..always enjoy your videos

@saveitforparts

Ай бұрын

I'd like to try DMSP, I've been trying to get into S-Band but haven't had the time for it!

good effort!

Whats up with the gain on those mics? You have it all the way down and the background noise is still strong. Tough installation? Enough space on the card? 1 week to get it working. Thats why i don't go near this type of equipment! What a disaster. Nice roof rack loading! Reminds me of when we used to put a 1/2 broken down Avanti Sigma IV on my roof then set it up on the roof with a special bracket i had made.

Working on the roff musst be rough^^ Sorry mate, I love you ;)