The tale of my new blue station, roughly set up for testing, improving reception and reducing noise before installing.

Only H-field at the moment as the E-Field is far too noisy placed inside the house. H-field aerials are 3 x 38 cm 20 turn (square) loops wound with 7 x 0.5 mm dia stranded mains conduit wire, approx 1.3 mm^2 cross sectional area. The three loops are currently coincident and arranged at 90 degrees to each other. Why three? Why not the system can handle three and I had enough wire, wood and hooks to make three. Also 20 turn loops don't need transformers and I don't have suitable toroids to make transformers.

The stranded wire is just too big to fit into the terminal block on the H-field pre-amp board. So I used boot lace ferrules with the wire cores only half way down before crimping, leaving half the ferrule to be crimped small enough to fit the terminals.

    Initial power up and exploration of the controller software showed horrendous noise. Traced to a poor USB power supply. I noticed while investigating this that channel 1C is most susceptible to showing noise and there where two ways it showed in the plots. One is a big signal on 1C with lower levels on 1B and 1A.

    Or a characteristic "sine wave with a kink". Fortunately I have a number of USB power supplies and one worked without interacting with the main board producing noise. Works so well you can't tell if the system is running from the USB power supply or 4 x 1.2 V NiMH batteries.

    So having got rid of the PSU noise I was left with either system noise or what was being picked up by the loops. Notice that there is a regular fairly fast signal in there, working out the period showed it to be 60 kHz, it also showed as a spike in the online frequency analyser plots. MSF, a time standard transmitter, located at Anthorn about 55 km away uses 60 kHz... Filter chips purchased and installed. Eye sight just about up to it and cut off frequency set to 50 KHz, bye bye MSF.

    No MSF but there is still something there that isn't random noise. Note that it's frequently in phase on 1A and 1B and out of phase on 1C. Doing the maths on the period shows this to be around 20 kHz. Along with Anthorn there is Skelton (about 30 km away). Both of these stations are believed to use frequencies around 20 kHz for communications with submerged submarines. This is effectively an "in band" signal so I guess I'm going to have to live with it and try an null it out on at least two of the loops by careful positioning of them.

    Finally for comparison this is what I get with the loop RJ45 unplugged from the main board. Notice there is no regular signal in phase across the channels and more higher frequency elements. Apart from the second plot all these plots are with the system in manual mode and no change to the plot scales.

Reception doesn't appear to be much of a problem, the system is picking up signals from Tunisia around 2,500 km away and being used for locating strikes in Southern France. This is with the loops leaning against an internal stud wall inside a building with 18" thick exterior stone walls. The loops will eventually end up in a loft. E-field might be more of a challenge to get it far enough away from the house.

--
Cheers
Dave.

what is the difference between pcb 20.3 and pcb 20.2?

Hallo zusammen

Mein System Blue funktionierte auf Anhieb. Nach ein paar Schwierigkeiten mit der Google Api-Key für die Kartendarstellung funzt alles wunderbar.
Jetzt geht es an das Feintuning. Mir ist aufgefallen, dass ab einem gewissen Zeitpunkt (meist von 7:45 Uhr - 21:45 Uhr) starke Störungen auftreten.
Die Ortungsquote sinkt gewaltig. Nachts ist super. Meine beiden Ferrit-Antenne stehen im 90° Winkel zueinander, Verstärkerplatine in der Mitte.
Zusätzlich sind sie in einem PVC Installationsrohr geschützt.
Ein drehen und versetzten der Antennen hat nichts gebracht (ca. 5 m Umkreis verschiedene Positionen).
Dann habe ich die beiden Antennen mit Aluminiumfolie umwickelt (schmaler Schlitz bzgl. Kurzschlusswindung drin) und geerdet.
Leider hat das auch nichts gebracht   Jetzt wäre noch die Frage, welche Einstellungen an der Verstärkung noch sinnvoll wären ?
Hier kenne ich mich leider noch zu wenig aus. An welchen Einstellungen kann "gespielt" werden ?
Leider kann ich aus der Signalansicht auch nicht richtig ableiten, wie ein "sauberes" Signal aussehen sollte.
Ich habe mal ein paar Bilder angehängt.

Wäre super, wenn da jemand schon Erfahrungen gemacht hat.

Gruß aus Heidenheim

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Has anyone noticed on the green systems that the strikes are not counting much.
I did a check on the system and its getting good hits however
the total strikes and percentage shows way lower than what it should.
I will be upgrading soon to the blue next few months until I get the purchase account setup.

What is the cost on the blue if I send the green back ? Boy I hate to drop off this network
since I have been running since 2012 ....5 years!

Paul Kalamaras
Palm Beach Gardens Blitzortung Station
The first of the group in the USA that started in 2012.

Hello to all. 
I just finished assembling the blue kit. 
You wanted to know if I supply the card and connect only the network, I can update the firmware and register to the portal my station?

Hi,

I have just received my system blue and going to make E field and H field antennas.  I have a couple of questions:

What is the minimum height for the E field antenna?
If I mount the system blue in my shed then I doubt I can get the E field antenna above 5m.
If I put the E field antenna in my house the E field antenna will have to go on my wind speed/direction mast, the wx station transmitter is located about 4m below, will this be okay as the speed/direction is just low frequency switch contacts?

The H field antenna is going to be two ferrite rod antennas, these will probably be in the loft.  I assume that these are both mounted horizontally, one facing east-west and the other north-south?

If I put my system blue in a remote location and use a wifi router what is the minimum recommended distance from system blue to wifi?

Sorry for the stupid basic questions but I would like to get it installed in the best place first time.

Thanks

Robin

Hallo liebe Forumsmitglieder!

Seit vorgestern bin ich nun stolzer Besitzer eines System Blue, ab heute ist alles einsatzbereit!
Ich habe gleich zu Anfang ein kleines Problemchen, also, wenn ein Admin von Blitzortung.org mitliest, bitte um Hilfestellung:
Ich kann das Webinterface nicht autentifizieren, da ich bisher keine Bestätigungsmail mit Aktivierungslink erhalten habe. Station-ID ist 1633, User-ID 1376.

Falls jemand vorab schon einen Tipp hat, bitte melden.

Ich werde euch sicher von Zeit zu Zeit mit Newbie-Fragen nerven, bitte nicht böse sein 

Hi all.

I have soldered in the past but feel it would be better to ask if someone with greater experience would be able to assist

Fully prepared to pay for your time, make a donation etc.

I live in south Oxfordshire so either happy to post my kit out or visit.

Thanks in advance,

Ron

Hello,
I have the RED system with version 7.4 which works fine. I wanted to move to version 8.1 but after 20 minutes there is no network connection and asked me to check the network cable. I tried version 8.0 and 8.1, the same finding, network problem !!!
Have you an idea about this failure.
Thank you and read you
JAK

I handed version 7.4 and no problem!

Hey Everyone,

I have a System Blue (PCB 19.3).  The system does not seem to be working.  I have everything soldered up according to the instructions... When I plug it in the following happens:

- Solid Red Power Light on main PCB.
- Solid Light on both E and H field boards.
- GPS light (on PCB, not the blue LED soldered on) blinks like 7 times and just then off.

I have a grounding clamp connected to the outside of the RG6, seemed a good place to ground. 

That's all that seems to happen.  LAN is not active (no lights on router or PCB RJ45 network connector).

Is this normal? If I have bad GPS reception (this is on my work bench in basement) will the unit fail to boot?

Thoughts?