On the side of the rack is the satellite/RF antenna switch board for Linux DVB/SDR and standalone DVB receivers for photon reception on lower bands. That's a total mess.


NA sat feed of RT Russia (it's a clear channel) from the KU band antenna with HH positioner.
Intelsat 6 93.0W transponder 12152MHz 20000 Symbol Rate (SR) H Polarization 3/4 FEC
Quad V/H linear LNB with side dual circular polarized LNB on the KU dish.

Thats slick, we had a rack I maintained here at the Uni with SDR. One of our rooms is hosting HD-SDR, I'm not familiar with DVB and it really sounds interesting to quote: "Receivers for photon reception on lower bands" heh heh. What are you watching in Russia, did you bug the Kremlin?

Who does that? nsasp00k does, lol


kv

Edit: I think I reached my emoticon limit.

 

What are you watching in Russia, did you bug the Kremlin?

Ha, Ha nothing fun happens there. The action is on the streets.

DVB(S orT) is a common method used to transmit satellite (or over the the air in the EU) information. I have a pile of old PCI boards that I once used but they have been replaced by USB dongles like the one in the middle for RF from 0.5mHz to 1Ghz with a external frequency converter front-end or satcom.

For snooping on the local version of the Kremlin and it's officers I still have my trusty old friend with a few mods.

 

Running some baseline charts with the Raspberry Pi DAQ system. This is a sunset to night sky (with some cloud cover) with about a 20% moon in the sky. The first little glitch is me moving the panels (3 80W panels isolated from the rest of the panels) to line up with the moons position in the sky, the second large spike is from a cars headlights driving out of the cul-de-sac I live in.

Y Log scale for Volts in BLUE and Watts in RED, X sample number.

 

Running some baseline charts with the Raspberry Pi DAQ system. This is a sunset to night sky (with some cloud cover) with about a 20% moon in the sky. The first little glitch is me moving the panels (3 80W panels isolated from the rest of the panels) to line up with the moons position in the sky, the second large spike is from a cars headlights driving out of the cul-de-sac I live in.

Y Log scale for Volts in BLUE and Watts in RED, X sample number.

Is that a little over a volt, I see?

kv

 

Here is the chart from most of last night as the moon moves into range and sets. It's starting to look like the weather might not be good on the Blood-moon night near Portland as the chart shows the light variations from cloud cover and ice crystals high in the sky.
My pictures of it are poor but this one from the net is close to what was happening.

Those sharp isolated spikes in the first part of the chart were driving me crazy as I thought there was a defect somewhere causing them but I matched the times to airplanes flying near the house (I'm in the glide-path for PDX) after seeing the spikes stopped after about midnight.

 

The source of my spikes, another plane.

Some DSLR shots of tonights moon

Clouds moving in.

1.2 uW power from a 240W array, I could charge a capacitor and use it to run my cell phone.

 

A different type of chart from last nights Voltage data:
Lots of clouds.
The 'X' time data moves counter-clockwise.

 

Blood Moon

 

Finally had some time to start working the numbers from the data.
It's hard to find information about PV panels at other than standard operation conditions but there are a few papers about low light operation that I used to model the data for some future use.

The first step is to look at Voc vs changing load resistance vs power with a panel internal shunt resistance of about 100,000 ohms in the model.

Samples are every three seconds from the start of the logging program. (some of the data log for the resistor tests)

System calibration (not during the Supermoon): Time in Unix seconds since the epoch
0.000000, 0.000000000, 0.000003, 1443492627  ^M
-0.000003, 0.000000000, 0.000008, 3  ^M
-0.000003, 0.000000000, 0.000010, 6  ^M
-0.000003, 0.000000000, 0.000010, 9  ^M
-0.000003, 0.000000000, 0.000010, 12  ^M
-0.000003, 0.000000000, 0.000011, 15  ^M
-0.000003, 0.000000000, 0.000010, 18
System calibration data logging:
0.127854, 0.000003271, 0.000011, 37815  ^M
0.127758, 0.000003266, 0.000011, 37818  ^M
0.125194, 0.000003136, 0.000011, 37821  ^M
0.086336, 0.000001491, 0.000011, 37824  ^M
0.077986, 0.000001217, 0.000011, 37827  ^M
0.076190, 0.000001161, 0.000011, 37830  ^M
0.075797, 0.000001150, 0.000011, 37833  ^M
0.075704, 0.000001147, 0.000011, 37836  ^M
0.075693, 0.000001146, 0.000011, 37839  ^M
0.075681, 0.000001146, 0.000011, 37842  ^M
0.075676, 0.000001146, 0.000011, 37845  ^M
0.075690, 0.000001146, 0.000011, 37848  ^M
0.075672, 0.000001146, 0.000011, 37851  ^M
0.075649, 0.000001145, 0.000011, 37854  ^M
0.075614, 0.000001144, 0.000011, 37857  ^M
0.075607, 0.000001144, 0.000011, 37860  ^M
0.075657, 0.000001145, 0.000011, 37863  ^M
0.075640, 0.000001145, 0.000011, 37866  ^M
0.075633, 0.000001145, 0.000011, 37869  ^M
0.075626, 0.000001144, 0.000011, 37872  ^M
0.075633, 0.000001145, 0.000011, 37875  ^M
0.075645, 0.000001145, 0.000011, 37878  ^M
0.075623, 0.000001144, 0.000011, 37881  ^M
0.100884, 0.000002036, 0.000011, 37884  ^M
0.121904, 0.000002973, 0.000011, 37887  ^M
0.048721, 0.000000475, 0.000011, 37890  ^M
0.032995, 0.000000218, 0.000011, 37893  ^M
0.029635, 0.000000176, 0.000011, 37896  ^M
0.028919, 0.000000167, 0.000011, 37899  ^M
0.028754, 0.000000165, 0.000011, 37902  ^M
0.028719, 0.000000165, 0.000011, 37905  ^M
0.028717, 0.000000165, 0.000011, 37908  ^M
0.028709, 0.000000165, 0.000011, 37911  ^M
0.028697, 0.000000165, 0.000011, 37914  ^M
0.028697, 0.000000165, 0.000011, 37917  ^M
0.028701, 0.000000165, 0.000011, 37920  ^M
0.028698, 0.000000165, 0.000011, 37923  ^M
0.028699, 0.000000165, 0.000011, 37926  ^M
0.028694, 0.000000165, 0.000011, 37929  ^M
0.028693, 0.000000165, 0.000011, 37932  ^M
0.028694, 0.000000165, 0.000011, 37935  ^M
0.028678, 0.000000165, 0.000011, 37938  ^M
0.028675, 0.000000165, 0.000011, 37941  ^M
0.028995, 0.000000168, 0.000011, 37944  ^M
0.106394, 0.000002265, 0.000011, 37947  ^M
0.122980, 0.000003026, 0.000011, 37950  ^M
0.126510, 0.000003202, 0.000011, 37953  ^M
0.127224, 0.000003238, 0.000011, 37956  ^M

Measured voltage under full moon light with open circuit, 4.7k, 1.0k and 10.0k resistors vs voltage.

The Power/Voltage model graph. (that includes resistance in the panel to ADC protection circuit)

You can see a somewhat typical Solar PN curve even at low-light levels.

All eclipse voltage, power, current data and graphs are with the 4.7K load resistor.
It starts at almost full 'Blood' stage (the tall sharp spikes are car lights) and moves to left -> right to full moonlight.
The first ramp is the main panel array in moonlight (the small ramps are me moving the array to center sky and the longer spike is an open circuit voltage reading taken by removing the 4.7K load for a while for model data)
The second ramp is when the other panel array starts getting full moonlight and both arrays are in view of the full moon until early morning when the program is stopped before dawn.
Really large images.

Power:

Voltage:

Time is clockwise on this Power graph (spikes removed):

I done until 2033.

 

https://www.accuweather.com/en/weat...nar-eclipse-for-1st-time-in-35-years/70003926

 

https://www.kptv.com/a-super-blood-...cle_43f2ba27-3558-5169-9d8a-19436e618752.html

(Meredith) -- Near the end of January, the moon will be completely covered in the Earth's shadow creating a total lunar eclipse -- and this will be a good one. It's being called a "Super Blood Wolf Moon," and it will be visible across all of the continental U.S., starting on January 20, and reaching its peak on the following night January 21.

https://earthsky.org/?p=172164