Our WebSDR build is progressing well, after the first installment we had finished the construction of 3 x Softrock RX III kits. These have all been brought together on the bench and compared to each other using SDR# and one of the Asus Xonar U7 sound cards. The first 3 units are working well and construction has commenced on the remaining 2 kits.
We also have the target enclosure (19″ 3RU), it will be a little bit cosy inside but everything should fit:
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- 3RU rack case
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- Adjustable divider inside
We have made some metal enclosures for each of the Softrock RX III boards. These will provide RF isolation from other electronics nearby. Since we had 5 boards to make, a drill template was drawn up that can be cut out and used to accurately make the required holes. The drill template is available HERE. Thanks to the template, everything lined up perfectly! To drill large holes in aluminium, a stepped drill bit is a very exciting and efficient way of turning aluminium into swarf:
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- Centre punching
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- Lining up the inside
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- Say hello to my little friend!
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- A dremel was used to square out the USB hole
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- Everything lines up!
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- First board in its new home
The “NUC” PC has also arrived, in the form of a Gigabyte GB-BXBT-1900. This uses a quad core Celeron J1900 processor, this will be ample processing power to handle plenty of concurrent listening sessions. 4GB RAM and a 120GB SSD is overkill but these days SSDs are the same price as spinning platter and should prove more reliable.
The Brix has had Debian Linux installed onto it, ready for adding the sound cards and further configuration.
The Wellbrook wideband receiving loop is now on its way – their product range has recently been enhanced by the release of the ALA1530LN which uses high gain JFETs rather than BJT to decrease the noise floor by up to 10dB. That sounds like an improvement worth waiting for!!
Attachments: Softrock RX III enclosure cutting template
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