Minitouner V2 or Winterhill ORDERED PARTS

[M0DQW]

I'm after a second receiver, just wondered if anyone has one for sale before I order the parts to build another?

Thanks
Matt
M0DQW

[g0mjw]

Hi Matt,

Good luck, there are probably several people with more tuners than they necessarily need, so you never know.

The Minitiouner can give you two receive channels, with a second TS output from the header. It needs a second FTDI chip and USB port but to date it has not been implemented in the software. I believe Tom is looking at implementing this in OpenTuner, but there is a long list of requests. There was also the REF Minitiouner Pro 2 available ready built, which has the second output included, though it isn't supported yet either and I don't think it is still in stock.

The Winterhill would give you up to 4, though getting a PI4 seems to be a challenge at the moment and the regulators can be hard to source, Mouser have them but Farnell are out of stock until August and like many many parts, they are now showing as end of life. (PE1CHY produced a daughter PCB to overcome that. viewtopic.php?t=8017&p=30965#p31122 I don't know if he ever made that board available as Murphy ensured once he had finished it, they came back into stock.)

Finally, have you looked at the Knucker? A similar concept but for DVB-T.

Mike

[M0DQW]

Hi Mike,

Thanks for the information.

Does this mean that if I was to install a second FTDI board with usb, I could connect it to another Pi that's running Longmynd?

I currently use my Minitouner V2 connected to a pi running longmynd and then use Toms Longmynd client. I notice that I can run two instances of Longmynd client on my pc, so would this work? How would another FTDI physically connect to the Minitouner?

Not looked at the knucker, I believe it doesnt do DVB-2S so no good for my needs, I think...

Tuners from REF seem to have vanished from their website

Yep, I was trying to add all the parts for a winterhill to farnell cart, but a couple of items were out of stock for quite some time. I think I still might be able to get the parts for the Minitouner V2 from Digikey, although I did notice a couple of alternatives were suggested.

Cheers
Matt

[g0mjw]

Hi Mike,

Thanks for the information.

Does this mean that if I was to install a second FTDI board with usb, I could connect it to another Pi that's running Longmynd?

No, it is only the transport stream that comes out on the second header.

Yep, I was trying to add all the parts for a winterhill to farnell cart, but a couple of items were out of stock for quite some time. I think I still might be able to get the parts for the Minitouner V2 from Digikey, although I did notice a couple of alternatives were suggested.

Mouser have a lot of the parts, including the regulators. Very few of the parts are critical, as long as they fit. You don't have to fit all the parts if you don't need them. E.g. the LNB supplies are only needed if you plan to supply an LNB from them. You don't have to fit both tuners either, but you will be limited to two signals at a time if you don't. The one critical component is the enclosure, which has to be blue.

Mike

[G4EWJ]

WinterHill can run in hub / server mode (no local display on the RPi) using an RPi2 or RPi3.

viewtopic.php?f=136&t=8265

With most stations running H.265 and the problems of using the RPi4 H.265 hardware decoder to handle multiple instances of VLC, local display mode is almost redundant.

Brian

[g0mjw]

I had forgotten the PI3 option. How are you getting on with the PI Pico? That looked really neat.

Mike

[M0DQW]

Thanks Guys.

I do actually have a couple of spare Pi4's, plus some 3b+, so the pi isnt the issue for me.

One question that pops to mind is when using WinterHill with two tuners, to get 4 signals, how many of the 4 ports need to be connected to the LNB output? I know how to split it already as I am doing that with the Minitouner and a Pluto.

I guess it feeds to all 4 ports?

Cheers
Matt

[g0mjw]

No, you only need to feed one port on each NIM, so two in total, typically the upper one for QO100 but it's your choice.

Mike

[G4EWJ]

The lower antenna inputs can be be used for terrestrial or to monitor your uplink.

The PicoHub works fine as my main QO-100 receiver, but I haven't taken it any further. With the supply of FTS4334s diminishing, I think it's better to let newcomers get a single one, rather than introduce a new device that needs two.

The Pico approach might be a candidate to replace or augment the FT2232H in a MiniTiouner, to get 2 transport streams.

Brian

[g0mjw]

Hi Brian,

The single pico could be a good choice for a single tuner module given the high cost of the FTDI modules. Does it have other benefits? It is a pity the tuner modules are disappearing, but over 6 years was a fairly good run. Onwards and downwards.

Mike