RFI silencing the Victron Solar Charge Controller MPPT 100 15 and possibly other models

Why?

You probably came here because you already know that the stock Victron MMPT Solar Charge Controller is nearly unusable if you need a quiet RF environment. I first noticed problems after installing solar on my sailing yacht. While the sun was shining hard on the solar panel (it's only a 100W :) ) the VHF reception went bad and the AIS reception range dropped. 

Problems are worse when we talk about shortwave. And thats what I am doing right now: I want to power my KiwiSDR  with this thing. The first run was really disappointing. Noise from the Victron everywhere.

What to do?

I did a quick google and didn't find a solution. So I had to play around with a few coils and capacitors. I probably should provide you with screenshots from the spectrum analyzer but this time I am A) too lazy and B) had a realtime look on the Kiwi spectrum to confirm my experiments. This is what works for me (and it's no professional solution at all - less math was involved, just plug - play - compare)

That's my 100/15 here. 

I added some common mode chokes to all inputs/outputs. 

There is also a nice amount of differential mode noise coming from the "load" output. Most of that noise showed up between 24MHz up to 30MHz

Please ignore the microcontroller on the left side. That thing just picks up the serial data from the controller and pushes them to my Wifi.

 THIS IS ONLY A TEST SETUP - NOT THE WAY I DO ELECTRICAL INSTALLS! - just in case :-)

 

From left to right:

1. Battery Connector: 10mH, Imax 5A (enough for my panel)
2. PV Connector: 3.3mH, Imax=4A
3. Load output: 10mH, Imax=1A, C=0,15 in parallel
4. Load line 6 times through FT140-43 style ferrite

The coils provide enough current for my use case. Feel free to take stronger coils. I took them from a sample box (Würth) but the could of cause be wound DIY.

The KiwiSDR is now running 24/7 on solar. If you check in on the Kiwi, you may still notice some noise but thats from the neighborhood and I am afraid I can't do anything against that.

Running on PV

 The Kiwi runs on 100% Solarpower now. This is experimental for now. There are still some outages to expect since I didn't manage to position the panel in a satisfying way.

Kiwi SNR with the High-Z Amp

I am still testing. For now: SNR is much better compared to the old coupling with the 1:48.

The big benefit I see is the reception in the VLF area. That was nearly deaf before. I had to attenuate the signal by guesstimated 10db (still waiting for my SMA-attenuator to arrive. 

The amp is not designed to be used on a 22m wire but works really well for my use case :)

KiWi's new preamp arrived!

 

The High Z Antenna Amplifier 
arrived today and I am really excited to try this thing out. It is designed for the vertical antenna I plan to use anytime soon.

For now I will try it on the wire. Stay tuned for results and thanks to the guys from Cross Country Wireless for the fast delivery!

1st time POTA activation

I went out with DG7PX and DO4HAA for a POTA activation. 

Park reference: DA-0138 nr Hamburg

See the german article here: https://draussenfunker.de/aktivitaeten/

We made a video (which is in german):

 KiwiSDR: Popup message if not logged in

I want to have my listeners to log in to my Kiwi and I have a message in the top bar that says "Please log in with your callsign"

However, 50% don't. Now I have this popup message (Thanks Niko, DG7PX)

Howto:

• open Admin interface
• go to "Webpage"
• find "additional HTML" and paste the following line (adjust to your needs)

 

<script language="javascript"> 

if (readCookie('ident') == '') { alert('please log in with callsign or nickname')} 

</script>

That forces an informational popup if the "callsign" field is empty.

 

 Tag Cloud for the Kiwi

I made kind of a tag cloud for the KiwiSDR. It shows two things:

• The most tuned-to frequencies
• The top users

Watch it in action here: http://dg7lan.mooo.com:8075

Find it on GitHub: 

https://github.com/doccodyblue/kiwicloud