MiniTioune

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The MiniTioune receiver project, developed by Jean-Pierre F6DZP, consists of the home constructed MiniTiouner hardware which interfaces via a standard USB 2.0 port to a Windows PC running the MiniTioune software.


Minituner.JPG Hardware ----------------- Windows Software 20160507 Walbury GW8VPG.jpg


It will receive DVB-S QPSK and DVB-S2 QPSK, 8PSK, 16APSK, 32 APSK from broadcast and amateur TV transmissions with symbol rates (SR) from 30 Msymbols down to 120 Ksymbols per second.

It can be used to receive satellite broadcasts, "normal" DATV signals and is the ONLY system capable of receiving Reduced Bandwidth (RB-TV) transmissions.

Definitions

The following terms should be used when describing this project - note "MiniTiouner" is the French project name but maybe pronounced "Minituner" in English.

  • MiniTioune = PC software
  • MiniTiouner = The complete project hardware with USB interface - this can be prefixed with the type of tuner eg "Sharp Minitiouner"

Hardware overview

Full details of the MiniTiouner hardware and build information are available here.

Software

Full details of the MiniTioune software designed to be used with the MiniTiouner hardware are available here MiniTioune software.

20160507 Walbury GW8VPG.jpg

Band Pass filters

There is a whole section of the wiki dedicated to this most important part of your system - take a look at the pictures on the top of this page to see why you must use filters before your MiniTiouner!

Receive upconverters

The new Serit NIM FTS4335 covers 143.75 - 2450 MHz and does not require any external frequency converters.

As mentioned above, the Sharp tuner component (also called NIM) used in a MiniTiouner covers a maximum of 650 to 2600 MHz.

Whilst this is fine for the 23cms (1.3 GHz) and 13cms (2.3 GHz) amateur bands it does not provide coverage of 146 (2mts) and 437 MHz (70cms) where the majority of ATV operation takes place. Therefore we need to use an upconverter in front of the tuner which converts 146 MHz and 437 MHz up to an L band frequency that the MiniTiouner will receive.

A separate section on the wiki gives details of these upconverters.