Radio Telescope Interface Alternative

[kd5ywa]

In an article from the ARRL...

http://www.arrl.org/files/file/ETP/Radio Astronomy/Build a Homebrew Radio Telescope-QST-0609.pdf

It talks about the use of an interface from the dish to the sound-card of your PC. Yet I am not good at soldering or the construction of electronics, so I was wondering,

1. Does anyone know someone who can build me one... I am willing to pay for it

or

2. Does anyone know of an alternative interface I could use.

I have the dish and everything else. I am geared up and ready to try this out, just don't have the interface.

Thanks a bunch!!!

 

[ShawnInPaso]

Looks to be a great project. I wonder if you have emailed the author and inquired about the PCB? Perhaps he has produced more than one PCB -or- can email you the "gerber" file which can be sent to a PCB manufacturing company to make one for you (the PCB not the finished product)? With a PCB in hand the building is made much easier.

It's hard to conceive of an alternative interface as the author built it as a "requirement" to the input criteria for the software.

 

[zz0468]

Looks like a bigger problem than etching a board would be programming the PIC. For someone not familar with that, there would be a separate learning curve just to get the PIC programmed. Building the rest of the board is the easy part.

I don't have any specific alternatives for the OP, other than to suggest that he research amateur radio astronomy, SETI, and see what the amateur microwave crowd is doing with weak signal reception. There's a TON of resources out there for all of the above, and quite possibly some kits still available. I use a General Radio 1236 IF amplifier to measure sun and moon noise, but it gives a visual indication via an analog meter.

If you're dead set on using the software in the article, then you need to acquire that interface somehow. If you're open to other suggestions, there is a wealth of better ideas out there, but it's going to take some amount of technical achievement to get any results, no matter how you approach the problem.