First Week

The members of this project are as follows:
Nico Carello- nj09care@siena.edu
Krista Plouman- km27plou@siena.edu
Brandon Watt- ba10watt@siena.edu
Timothy Ladeairous- tj29lade@siena.edu
Josh Hayes- jt28haye@siena.edu

This week we were tasked with creating the Receiver Box, 90° Combiner, High Pass Filter, and working on the code 

Brandon and Josh completed the 90 Combiner and the High Pass Filter. This was completed using pages 16-22 of the SRT Hardware Manual by Dustin Johnson. It was relatively straightforward to construct since all the pieces were pre-ordered and the instructions were relatively clear. The hardest part had to be the cutting of the circuit board since we could only utilize only a quarter of the full sheet for what was needed and the board itself was quite easy to break. Also, since the printout was in black and white, it was tough to figure out which wires the instructions were referencing when they referred to colors. This was resolved by pulling up the pdf which had the instructions in color. In doing this, it also helped with the construction of the receiver board which was also color coded. 

FIG 1: The Solder Master (Self Titled) himself.

FIG 2: Earliest stages of the board with the 90° Combiner on the plate.

Krista and Nico worked on the code that was created by Jon Farrel in the year prior. Their work can be seen by posts they published on the Blogger page.

Tim worked on drilling holes in the Receiver board to bolt down all the components. The instructions for this work can be found on pages 24-29 in the SRT Hardware Manual by Dustin Johnson. It took 2 days to get all the holes measured and drilled into the board. The instructions called for laser precision which we could not achieve here on campus. Also, once the holes were drilled, we outlined where each part and connection would go and realized we were missing a connection between the first IF Amp and the 7MHz filter. We also tried to color code our wires as best we could, making orange ground, red 15 volts, blue 12 volts, and yellow 5 volts. Upon actually beginning to bolt components down, it was decided that longer screws would be desirable as the shorter screws would make some connections very difficult to complete. Connections with more than 2 pieces proved to be very troublesome, with the solder not being able to bind the wires. Shrink tubing was used to cover connections that ran the risk of interacting with other connections close by in order to prevent a short circuit from damaging the board. A larger holding box would have been desirable if it were possible to attain since the current box seems to be a tight for all the different components. The bits used to drill the holes were 7/64 and 5/32. 

FIG 3: This is the circuit diagram created by MIT color coded to match the wires we were using. With key components circled that had different voltage wires being run through them.

FIG 4: This is roughly the completed board, with nearly all the wiring completed, barring the few pieces were waiting to come in and the components not being bolted in.

The group learned the purpose of a bias tee. It acts as a filter for DC and AC, where AC is allowed through the capacitor while DC is allowed through the inductor. 

FIG 5: A simple diagram of how a bias tee works.