ADLAM PLUTO SDR Hardware shielding.

[CopperCone]

Thought this merited its own thread, since the other thread is focused on the software side.

It is completely unshielded.

I was thinkin either to cut out copper or nickle silver templates and wrap it, grounding it to the SMA connectors, but I was worried that the distributed capacitance of the shield might detune some kind of factory calibration.

Short: Do microwave designers take the shield can into account when they design the circuit, or have to (typically) modify the circuit after the shield can is made?

Do you think it will be alright, or should I put it in a larger box on standoffs and route extension cables to the box faces? Like, put 1 or 2 inch plastic standoffs on the bottom of the SDR body, glue it inside of a metal box (so its sitting 1 or 2 inches above and bellow the sides of the box, and use short SMA cable extensions of good quality to bridge it to the box ends.

It can do up to 6 GHz with the modification, I never actually built any kind of circuit that runs on microwave frequencies (only used test equipment) in this area, so I am not sure what will happen.

My hunch tells me it won't make a difference, but I figure before I waste a bunch of copper I'd ask. it looks like you only have 0.75cm between the plastic body of the casing and the PCB.

What spot tests would be appropriate to run on something modified like that to verify its accuracy? I am scared it will bite me in the ass some how in an unexpected way.