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Does anyone know of any up converters that do not cost more than the SDR?


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I have been searching for a while to get a up converter that was not extremely expensive. While there is a cheap mod to get HF on the device, it involves bypassing all of the protection circuits on the device, and the HF performance is very poor so I would like to avoid it.

So has anyone found any proper up converters that are low cost, and not the oil company and nation state bankrupting priced?

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What freq. range are you trying to get? I know for 2.4GHz there's a fairly inexpensive wifi web cam set up that has a 2.4GHz dongle that comes with it and you can use there for that freq. range. I'd like to go the other way, down to the AM radio and HAM bands but those boards are in the $50-$60 range so it's not going to happen any time soon.

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You can use microwave down converters from old system TV dish systems. One that I am using takes 3 - 15 GHz down to the 900 MHz band.

To go into HF ham bands you can get a USRP with the proper daughter board or build your own simple sdr to match which ham band you want to tune.

Edited by ElfnetCommunications
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You can use microwave down converters from old system TV dish systems. One that I am using takes 3 - 15 GHz down to the 900 MHz band.

To go into HF ham bands you can get a USRP with the proper daughter board or build your own simple sdr to match which ham band you want to tune.

This is interesting. So could I use part of my old DirectTV dish to make one of these and if so what part(s) would I use. Thanks.
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  • 4 weeks later...

What freq. range are you trying to get? I know for 2.4GHz there's a fairly inexpensive wifi web cam set up that has a 2.4GHz dongle that comes with it and you can use there for that freq. range. I'd like to go the other way, down to the AM radio and HAM bands but those boards are in the $50-$60 range so it's not going to happen any time soon.

Look on ebay for the "Ham It Up" board. I saw it there for $30 and free shipping last week.

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This is interesting. So could I use part of my old DirectTV dish to make one of these and if so what part(s) would I use. Thanks.

No the new dish's usa an LNA (Low Noise Amplifier) that requires 24 V phantom power to drive it from the receiver box. The down converter I have came off an old C band type dish (Big black mesh type)

Now you can use the actual parabolic dish of course but the head LNA or LNB as some call it is somewhere in the 25 GHz area i think and your DTV box receives it as-is and converts it all internally.

I am no direct TV expert in fact I hardly ever watch TV.

Edited by ElfnetCommunications
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