Serit tuner

As of February 2017 the Sharp and Samsung tuners are no longer available and the MiniTiouner project will use a tuner 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 exposed at CAT16 ( images/d/df/MiniTiouner_CAT16.pdf ) by Jean-Pierre F6DZP

Feedback

Please use the BATC forum for any feedback

http://www.batc.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=4853

Dual receiver

The FTS4335 FTS4335 MiniTiouner 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.

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 has less gain than the Sharp.

Filter designs are available here

Software

To use the FTS4335 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 tuners. You need to register on the Viva DATV forum before being able to download.

Adapter card

Also, due to a different pinouts from the Sharp NIM, the FTS4335 MiniTiouner will also need a simple adapter board to enable it to be plugged in to the MiniTiouner standard hardware.

Brian G4EWJ has designed a PCB and the blank board plus a full set of (leaded) components and the Serit MiniTiouner is available in the BATC shop.

Full instructions on how to build the kit are available in this pdf:

Instructions and Parts List

media:Serit_FTS4335V_Converter_Kit_MTK2_Instructions_v1-04_Parts_Build_A1_v1.zip