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There's little to no good technical information on the X10 cameras
available on the web. If you're a non-technical person, give up.
There's nothing here that can help you.
But for the rest of you who aren't going to go and try to do something dumb, and know which end of the soldering iron gets hot, here's some collected information and what I'm doing. TYPE ACCEPTANCE Unless you're a suitably-licensed amateur radio operator, and intend on using this for legal purposes and identifying properly, don't mess with the unit. You probably don't know what you're doing anyway. Transmitter info
FCC database information Of note is the schematic. Frequency range The transmitter and receiver have a 4-position switch which determines the transmit or receive frequency. The frequency selected by those settings are:
2402 - 2417 MHz Primary
2417 - 2450 MHz Co-secondary with government radiolocation (industrial,
scientific and medical are primary)
2450 - 2483.5 MHz No amateur - Industrial, scientific and medical ***
So, if you modify, stick to channels A and B.
transmitter modifications
On my unit, I have constructed an amplifier using an RFMD2126. More details to come on that someday. transmit antenna modifications The stock X10 cam transmitter has a patch antenna. I opted for a 1/4 wave vertical on mine, as I need some sort of non-directionality for use on the plane.
Receiver
receiver modifications My receiver was a little deaf, or rather, I found the receiver had significantly better performance when I built and include a preamp. I built a Down East Microwave 13ULNAK, and am happy with the results. It's also always nice to have an indication of relative signal strength. This guy has done the hard wwork of finding a good source of RSSI. What I've done is modify my receiver and use a LM3914 dot/bar display driver to provide a visual indication of signal strength. Schematic to come someday. Of course, there are the Wavecom units. If you have a Wavecom, you may be interested in providing yourself with the ability to _really_ QSY. So I burned a PIC and added an LCD display to one of my units, works well! See making a video scanner for more information.
receive antenna modifications Again, stock unit comes with patch antenna. I've discarded the patch antenna and connectorized using an SMA. The SMA goes via (short) coax to the 13ULNAK preamp, and then to a patch antenna that I've designed (and tuned) for use at this frequency. The patch antenna is mounted at the focus of a 18" DSS dish. links of note last modified Fri Jan 17 17:02:02 CST 2003 by timc! |
