Collaborate Disseminate
A word of advice: If you see an old direct satellite TV dish put out to the curb, grab it before the trash collector does. Like microwave ovens, satellite dishes …read more Continue reading Minimal Mods Make Commodity LNBs Work for QO-100 Reception
It may come as a shock to some, but TV used to be a big deal — a very big deal. Sitting down in front of the glowing tube for …read more Continue reading Retrotechtacular: Measuring TV Audiences with the “Poll-O-Meter”
In a world with software-defined radios and single-chip receivers, a superheterodyne shortwave radio might not exactly score high on the pizzazz scale. After all, people have been mixing, filtering, and …read more Continue reading A Superheterodyne Receiver with a 74xx Twist
Oscillators with components that aren’t electrically connected to anything? PCB traces that function as passive components based solely on their shape? Slots and holes in the board with specific functions? Welcome to the weird and wonderful world of microwave electronics, brought to you through this teardown and analysis of a Doppler microwave transceiver module.
We’ve always been fascinated by the way conventional electronic rules break down as frequency increases. The Doppler module that [Kerry Wong] chose to pop open, a Microsemi X-band transceiver that goes for about $10 on eBay right now, has vanishingly few components inside. One transistor for …read more
Continue reading Doppler Module Teardown Reveals the Weird World of Microwave Electronics