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| Looking for a pocket rf spectrum analyzer |
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| DaneLaw:
The only "weather" feature im familiar that are baked into Mayhem from scratch (as a stand-alone unit) is the radiosonde. That is a feature where you can monitor/decode these weather systems/ballons and get their data and find them when they drop down etc.. and follow them on a map on the HackRF with Portapack example at 4:32 in this video. |
| pinchies:
Dear @Kean and others, Firstly, merry christmas all! As someone who has the trinity of hackRF, TinySA ultra, and rf explorer -- I'm interested in looking at noise in the 2.4ghz wifi bands. Would you say the sample rate and resolution of the TinySA ultra is sufficient for this? Or is the RF explorer a better tool for this? Would appreciate any insights you can give on these! I did see the youtube video of the TinySA ultra being used to show the 2.4-2.5 spectrum space, and it looked like it was maybe rather slow to update? Are the HackRF or RF Explorer better in this regard perhaps? |
| Kean:
--- Quote from: pinchies on December 25, 2023, 12:21:25 pm ---Dear @Kean and others, Firstly, merry christmas all! As someone who has the trinity of hackRF, TinySA ultra, and rf explorer -- I'm interested in looking at noise in the 2.4ghz wifi bands. Would you say the sample rate and resolution of the TinySA ultra is sufficient for this? Or is the RF explorer a better tool for this? Would appreciate any insights you can give on these! I did see the youtube video of the TinySA ultra being used to show the 2.4-2.5 spectrum space, and it looked like it was maybe rather slow to update? Are the HackRF or RF Explorer better in this regard perhaps? --- End quote --- First, what do you mean by "noise"? I presume you actually mean channel usage? So far with the TinySA Ultra I have only done some LF filter measurements, and some EMC probing around 200MHz. I've not tried it on the WiFi band, nor have I tried it with any PC software. None of these are great for looking at intermittent transmissions, and you really want an RTSA for that. Of course an RTSA is way more expensive, so you have to make use of a few workarounds. And none of these have particularly fast sweep speeds, so you need to limit the span and adjust the RBW for faster sweeps. As shown in the video linked by G0HZU above, you can certainly get an idea of channel usage if you enable max hold and leave the device capturing for a couple of minutes. The waterfall display is also useful for seeing channel usage over time and the TinySA can even do that on the built-in LCD, whereas most other devices would require a PC. The TinySA display makes it much nicer to use than the RF Explorer, but the RF Explorer PC software is pretty good if you don't need the portability. It has been ages since I used my HackRF, but I recall there was software for it that also had a good waterfall display. The main benefit of the HackRF is the decoding and related software features. For WiFi in particular, you can use some WiFi access points (e.g. Ubiquiti) to do a scan to show channel usage. |
| pinchies:
Thank for the advice. I’m thinking based on what you’re saying, TinySA might be the best place to start, even with those limitations. I’m having some strange wifi connection issue, and I am suspecting more than just congestion on wifi channels. I also have other devices (e.g Eufy Home stuff) that create their own hidden wifi networks. I’m wanting to establish that there are no other 2.4ghz noise sources, so I am looking for something more powerful than just wifi scanning on my router’s “advanced tomato” firmware. |
| Kean:
If I was buying just one device and with a limited budget, it would currently be the TinySA Ultra. |
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