Many thanks for another excellent video. I am a IEEE fellow in microwaves and full professor, teaching electromagnetic fields and antennas. I am finding the tinySA extremely useful for teaching. Many concepts are immediately clear by using the tinySA. The antenna gain is a good example. In this video you have given to me a very good idea and I am now looking forward to receive a mixer. Please keep going with your excellent work. All the best
Very clever this Dutchman! If it weren't so, they would have been flooded long ago. Learned a lot in a few minutes and got new ideas. Thank you very much!
Just a note for beginners: Many different mixers and oscillators can be used in conjunction with a TinySA to look at signals in bands that the TinySA doesn't directly cover. While it's very convenient to have the programmability of the Tiny SA signal generator and its square wave harmonics the idea of mixing 2 signals in order to see one of interest will work with all sorts of other devices that you might have access to. Just get a mixer that covers the frequencies of interest, and a signal source that covers the frequencies of interest, if not with a sinusoidal source, then with the harmonic multiples from a square wave output.
It looks like you have 2 different versions of tinySA. Is one a authentic one and the other a knockoff (fake) one? I have a tinysA and love this thing. I don't use it often and I don't use it for many things. The main reason I bought it was in having better accuracy in adjusting my TV antennas to latch onto specific channels. The fact that I can narrow down to a very small range for specific channels makes this device so much better than just using a TV's "signal meter." I often wondered about using harmonics to monitor higher signals. This method here in this video is excellent. -It's too bad that there isn't some link on the parts list and instructions to build that antenna/mixer device.- *Never mind.... found it!* It's pretty cool.
I love your device.! IMSAI Guy did an outstanding job showing it off... BUT ->> Can you please produce the TinySA as the SmallSA or MediumSA? Details: Encased in a sturdy METAL housing / N female connectors and/or SMA AND... Possibly create ANOTHER “system”? The market would absolutely LOVE a small form factor, low in cost, high in quality. “TINY DUPLEXER TUNING SYSTEM” 130-990 Mhz range. Tracking Generator (or, possibly a single tone generator transmitting simultaneously on a few hundred frequencies?) Something like this would be ideal for Public-Safety and private LMR (land mobile radio). Many of the small radio shops have closed up as of late, many due to the Chinese Biological Weapon attack on the USA and the entire world. With a lack of local resources to physically visit a repeater site, the outage time of many critical life-safety systems is increased. When a duplexer must be removed from its installed site, it creates numerous problems and, even if a “spare” / “tuned” duplexer is available, there is still a level of inconvenience involved. The cost of a “budget” spectrum analyzer with integral tracking generator, while significantly lower than in previous years, is still cost prohibitive for many small volunteer fire departments and EMS agencies, etc... AND... with the REVERSAL of the horrible “Obama Era Stimulus Garbage + Nonsense Legislation), the “T-Band” spectrum (470.000 - 520.000 MHz), an enormous number of 2-way radio communications systems will need to be re-configured to take advantage of this newly “freed up” spectrum. The “T-Band” UHF spectrum was initially assigned and licensed to public safety organizations immediately following the tragedy on September 11, 2021. It enabled small to mid-sized police / fire / EMS/ other public safety entities to make use of a portion of the spectrum abandoned by television broadcasters during the switch to digital TV. These small organizations could take advantage of relatively exclusive use of assigned and licensed frequencies for daily operations as well as disaster interoperability. After MANY organizations completed extensive and expensive frequency coordination and licensing, system engineering, construction of new sites and purchase of an enormous number of radios, everything was operating smoothly. Then, in 2012, the DemonCrats realized they could collect gigantic lobbying 💰 cash by confiscating that newly assigned swath of frequencies and then conducting auctions to sell this valuable resource to private corporations. The date of execution was set and most organizations (INCLUDING THE ENTIRE CITY OF NEW YORK!! PD/fire/EMS/OEM..) began to look for alternatives. Most of the smaller departments licensed alternative frequencies and moved off of T-Band, but it would be impossible for the larger departments to do so. So, they appealed to the Trump administration and got relief! (THAT is just one of the many reasons he was a truly GREAT president... plus, he wasn’t the “Big Guy” / Hunter the Crack-Boi’s pappy / suffering from Dementia like Biden 😳) Now that they are able to use their older licenses AND, in many cases, the existing equipment.. There will be a large number of duplexer’s waiting to be re-tuned. Why spend thousands (even the cheapest “Rigol” CHINESIUM brand of spectrum analyzer with tracking generator is $1600) when a TinySA with additional tracking generator could be purposed for this task. Plus... it gives these agencies a spectrum analyzer for daily use, interference hunting , etc.
Last year I saw several videos on this tinySA. I figured, for the price, I'll get one and see just how good it really is. The one thing though, I was aware of the FAKE/KNOCKOFF units that are out there and how to identify them. I was lucky to find a genuine one on Amazon. My go to is Amazon because they are excellent at customer support and if what I received was not what was advertised, there's no problem returning it for a refund and a lying seller gets some negative marks against them. LOL But it arrived and it was a genuine version. I don't use it much as I got it mostly to use to adjust and monitor our several TV antennas. It has become my go to instrument to align antennas. It's so much better than the simple signal meters built into TVs. I do have a mobile signal meter, but frankly, it's junk. LOL I love this thing!
