BATC Forum

Hey everyone!

Beginner here, going to attempt to build a Portsdown transmitter to transmit random videos to my TV - just for fun. I do, however, live in the US and would rather use ATSC or QAM, instead of DVB-S. Televisions here dont have a DVB-S receiver built in, and having to buy an extra STB makes the project less fun for me

My question is - what components do I need to change in order to modulate QAM frequencies instead of DVB-S? Is it just software (hopefully ) or are there hardware changes involved as well?

My research has only turned up 1 result so far: https://github.com/F5OEO/rpidatv/issues/9

Hi Ryan

Sorry to disappoint you, but neither the Portsdown software or hardware is capable of producing ATSC or QAM. The filter-modulator board is QPSK only, and I doubt that the RPi is powerful enough to drive to drive an SDR with the signals it needs for ATSC or QAM.

You would need to use a more powerful PC with an SDR, such as the Lime SDR or ADALM Pluto, to generate QAM. I am not aware of any software for generating ATSC, but someone might have published something to work with GNU Radio.

Dave

The majority of Digital Amateur TV in the U.S uses DVB-T using Hides equipment.

- Charles