Categories
Ham Radio

WWVB SDR

[Thursday 1/23: 2.5 treadmill miles; Saturday 1/25: 5 snowy road miles: Monday 1/27: 2.5 treadmill miles; Thursday 1/30: 2.5 treadmill; today 5 road miles, warmer this time]

A few months back I built the audio vector network analyzer that I had read about in QEX magazine. Recently I saw some information about using similar parts to build a WWVB (60 KHz) time and frequency receiver. So I ordered the parts and I’m working on it.

There are basically three parts: a Teensy souped-up Arduino, a small color LCD screen and an audio chip on a separate little circuit board that talks to the Teensy. You hook your antenna up to the microphone input of the sound card and this thing does direct digitization of the 60 KHz signal and decodes it via software defined radio techniques.

They recently came out with a newer model of Teensy, the 4.0. It is a much faster chip than the 3.x series, and cheaper too. So I bought that one. Now I’m trying to modify the software to work with the new chip. And I may need to make an appropriate antenna.