Did I damage my krakenSDR unit?

1

Hey all,

I’m picking my hardware up again and trying to learn & play with this again.

I was pretty new my first time around and I’m worried I damaged my equipment… Is there a way I can troubleshoot / test this to confirm it’s okay?

First time around… I used a hand held radio right next to my setup’s whip antennas… it crashed.

It started back up and seemed to be working… but it was producing somewhat erratic compass readings in the gui… I can’t recall if it was doing that before hand.

I did attempt to use all the receivers to listen to some radio… to kind of troubleshoot if I broke it. They all worked, but one of them sounded way more staticky.

If I swap the antennas around and still get some static on that same receiver… did I damage it beyond repair to even use the krakensdr for DFing?

It can still start up… everything reads “ok” in the gui… the compass just seems erratic. Is it because I’m setting it up to test in my apartment? Sounded by routers…tv’s etc??

Bear with me - I’m a total noob.

If I can confirm this one is okay…. I’m gonna purchase another set to play with the cloud mapper.

2

What is the output power of your handheld? It is possible that transmitting right next to the KrakenSDR antennas could have destroyed the input of the tuners. You should never transmit right next to any receiver equipment.

There’s no easier way to troubleshoot a blown front end, other than trying to receive a known signal and comparing it with a known good unit, or known good prior power reading.

If one tuner has significantly lower SNR, then it could unfortunately be damaged.

But at the same time, testing the unit indoors is a recipe for failure. The heavy multipath from the walls and nearby objects will make any readings almost meaningless.

1 Like
3

Hey sir,

Thanks for the quick response!

I’ll keep all this in mind.

Ill be looking to setup a more remote test soon then!