Serit tuner

As of February 2017 the Sharp and Samsung NIMs are no longer available and the MiniTiouner project will use a NIM from Serit (FTS-4335) which covers from 143.75MHz right through to 2450 MHz without the need for any upconverters.

The first prototype was shown at CAT16 by Jean-Pierre F6DZP - you can watch a video of his presentation on the BATC Youtube channel.

Why should I buy a Serit tuner?

You should buy one if you already have MiniTiouner hardware and you want to be able to receive 146 MHz and 70cms without building an upconverter.

You should buy one if you already have MiniTiouner hardware and want to experiment with the higher DVB-S2 modes such as 32APSK which the Sharp NIM cannot demodulate.

You should buy one if you have not yet built a MiniTiouner receiver as the previous Sharp tuner is no longer available.

If neither of those apply, you don't need one! It does not perform any better than a Sharp - in fact it needs more gain in front of it.

MiniTiouner Version 2 main board

The Serit tuner has a different pin out to the original Sharp unit and Mike G0MJW has designed a MiniTiouner version 2 PCB specifically for use with the Serit tuner.

Filters and pre-amps

The wide band coverage makes building a receiver for 146 or 437 much easier, although you will need a pre-amp followed by lots of filtering for each band, just like the Sharp did, and probably followed by a Satellite line amp from ebay as the Serit FTS-4335 has less gain than the Sharp.

Filter designs are available here

Software

To use the FTS4335 NIM with the MiniTiouner, you will need to run Ver 0.6d or later versions of the excellent MiniTioune software. This is available for download from the Viva DATV forum here and will work with Sharp, Eardatek or Serit NIMs. You need to register on the Viva DATV forum before being able to download.

Dual receiver

The Serit FTS4335 NIM is capable of receiving more than one signal simultaneously; however the BATC hardware and software can only receive one signal at a time. There is provision for a socket on the converter PCB to connect to the second receive output of the FTS4335V for experimentation. F6DZP's dual receive software is still under development and may be available for testing. See his web site at: http://www.vivadatv.org

Even though only one transmission can be received at any time with this converter PCB, it is possible to select which of the two antenna sockets is used, allowing one of two antennas / converters to be connected.