WinterHill Receiver Project

WinterHill

The WinterHill receiver project by Brian G4EWJ with hindrance and occasional help from Mike G0MJW. It uses the BATC Advanced receiver hardware.

Features

• WinterHill is a 4 channel DVB-S/S2 receiver based on the BATC Advanced Receiver PCB

• The main components are a Raspberry Pi 4 (RPi4), 2 x FTS433x NIMs, 2 x PICs and 2 optional LNB PSU boards

• The PICs are programmed in-circuit automatically during software installation

• The RPi4 software is based on LongMynd by M0HMO

• The RPi4 interfaces to each NIM using a PIC, rather than an FT2232H USB module

• The 4 received transport streams (TS) can be sent to any location using UDP protocol - the RPi4 itself, the local network, or anywhere on the internet

• Transport streams are displayed either locally on the RPi4, or remotely using VLC

• Receive commands can come from various sources, including QO-100 QuickTune designed by M0DTS

• The highest symbol rate is limited by the speed of the serial connections between devices and is about 10M bit/s per NIM. E.g. the QO-100 beacon at SR1500 FEC4/5 (2.4Mbps) and a terrestrial repeater at SR4000 FEC7/8 (7Mbps) should be OK.

• Currently, the lowest symbol rate that can be received is 66kS

• WinterHill is named in memory of Brian G3SMU, who was a huge presence on ATV and microwaves from his Winter Hill QTH in Lancashire, North-West England

Timeline

December 2020 - Currently the project is at the design phase with a proof of concept receiver working on breadboard hardware.

February 2021 - beta testing in progress

March 2021 - First production PCBs expected

Hardware

The PCB design by Mike G0MJW is based on a completely new concept, BATC Advanced DATV Receiver, supporting two SERIT tuners with an integrated Raspberry PI4 and PICs. No USB module is required. This supports 4 simultaneous receivers in either a set top box mode, with the PI desktop, or headless, or a combination of these.

Version 0.1

Feasibility design which worked fine

Version 0.2

A prototype that was also built by several beta testers. Two pin programming jumper instead of 3 pin and didn't fit in the box.

Version 1

First general release PCB - Likely release March 2021

Full Hardware Construction details can be found on this Wiki Page: Advanced_receiver_hardware

Documentation

Raspberry Pi4 SD Card Building and Software Installation Manual (contains RPi4 software download details): Media:WinterHill-RPi-Installation-Manual-3v20a-Rev1.pdf

Operations Manual - covers the Raspberry Pi and PC Control and Viewing utilities: Media:WinterHill-Operations-Manual-3v20a-Rev4.pdf

Software

Control and Viewing Software for the PC. See the included README files for installation instructions. See the WinterHill Operations manual for usage instructions.

Receive Commander - sends receive commands from a PC to WinterHill: File:whpcrxcom-3v20d.zip

Multi VLC Viewer - displays the 4 channels received by WinterHill: File:whpcviewer-3v20d.zip