Although reducing gain can help, of course innevitably this is at the expense of the unit’s native sensitivity. You can see this in Spectravue as when you plug in the antenna the noise floor rises potentially several tens of dB. Typically the symptom is that it will appear deaf: this is the noise floor rising due to an overloaded front end. Although there is fixed and programmable front end filtering already on the FCD, at VHF it’s not very selective. Some people have experienced front end overloading with the FCD at VHF in particular. However, Pro firmware and Base firmware are not interchangeable.Ī. Yes, already the devices can have their firmware upgraded in a matter of a few seconds by the user.
At present, the upgrade will require a return of the device so that it can be modified to accept “Pro” firmware.Ī. Can I upgrade a “Base” version to a “Pro” version?Ī. The Pro model is unrestricted in its frequency coverage. The Base model is frequency restricted and designed as an entry level minimal cost device, targetted for educational outreach. There are two versions, the Base and the Pro models. What’s the difference between versions?Ī.
The sound card element works with Mac OSX and Ubuntu 10.10 32 and 64 bit, but the frequency setting application has not been ported yet.
Currently Windows 2000 SP4, XP 32 bit, and Vista and Windows 7 32 and 64 bit have been tested. Each unit is tested for 0.15uV for 12dB SINAD NBFM at 145MHz and 435MHz. Examples include Linrad, Spectravue, Rocky and M0KGK.Ī. As well as the forthcoming FUNcube front end application, any application that understands a standard stereo soundcard configured for quadrature, or I/Q, reception should work. What applications work with the FUNcube Dongle?Ī. Once the ADC’s decimation filter skirts have been taken into account, you have about 80kHz. Similarly for data reception, as long as a data demodulator has been written that will accept standard soundcard quadrature I/Q reception, that will work too.Ī. So, for analogue reception, as well as narrow band FM and SSB, it is also possible to receive, for example, sound subcarriers for TV broadcast. As long as the signal fits within about an 80kHz bandwidth, the FUNcube Dongle is capable of receiving the radio signal. The FUNcube Dongle has no restriction on modulation schemes: it is limited only by the application program running on the host computer. In testing, we have determined that there is a gap between about 1,100MHz and 1,270MHz where the design of the local oscillator VCO, PLL and divider chain in the tuner chip don’t provide seemless coverage.Ī. Upper frequency limit is beyond 2,000MHz. 64-1,700MHz, although straw poll tests on pre-production units indicate that units can be stretched down to 51.5MHz or so.