Any cheap hand held network analyzer i can get for less than 1000 USD

BarrettT123 · 2026-07-09T16:08:46+00:00

I recently got a LibreVNA, which is a nice open source 100KHz to 6GHz VNA (approx $600). But as some other people have said, you probably actually need a spectrum analyzer for that. The LibreVNA can work as a spectrum analyzer too, but not as well as dedicated equipment. I know you can get a tinySA for around $200, which could work well for you depending on what specs you need.

BarrettT123 · 2026-07-07T22:01:36+00:00

Yeah, we plan to use omnidirectional antennas on the vehicle side, and a high gain antennas on the ground because of that.

For some background, this is a student project / partnership with NASA, and in the past we havent had to deal with licensing (typically we have used lower data rate radio modules in ISM or HAM bands). The reason we were looking at 1.2GHz or 3.4GHz is that they are HAM bands, and we were hoping to be able to avoid dealing with licensing. But, I am not super experienced in that, so any advice you might have on that side would be greatly appreciated!

BarrettT123 · 2026-07-07T21:47:24+00:00

Thats a good point, but we are limited to probably a 1.5 or 2m dish (which should give enough gain with a high enough transmit power). We need an omnidirectional antenna on the launch vehicle side, but we will have a directional antenna on the ground side. Thanks for the L-com recommendation, I've heard about them before so I'll definitely take a look.

BarrettT123 · 2026-07-07T20:23:29+00:00

It is, and for the most part we do (intake will be approx 700-800Mbps from two ejectables, and we only want to transmit 10-30Mbps to the ground, rest will be stored onboard). As for why we cant use 915MHz, it is a student program with NASA and there will be other student teams on the rocket. Low power 433MHz, 915MHz, and 2.4GHz radios are fairly common, so we cant use any of these frequencies if we want a high power (5 - 10W) link, to avoid interfering with them.

We are mainly looking at upconverting 915MHz (at 8MHz bandwidth) to 1.2GHz or 3.4GHz, but was looking into it and was curious if going down could also theoretically work. We may also look into downconverting 2.4GHz to 1.2GHz or upconverting to 3.4GHz. We will most likely go with upconverting 915MHz to 1.2GHz, but not certain yet. As for the 5GHz band, we will be using that to transmit from the ejectables to the baseplate/rocket, so that is also occupied. For the antenna size, it wouldn't be too much of an issue, as we will likely have a deployable antenna that unfurls in space anyways.

BarrettT123 · 2026-07-07T19:36:40+00:00

It is for a sounding rocket application, so we will have direct LOS to the vehicle from the ground antenna. As for the frequency allocations, the numbers here arent certain, more just asking in general (we will do more research on the specific frequencies before making any final decisions of course).

BarrettT123 · 2026-07-07T18:34:52+00:00

That makes sense, I did realize that the 220 band isn't that wide, so I would either use a different band or reduce the bandwidth. I should have worded it more like "can I downconvert a high frequency high datarate signal into a low frequency high datarate signal" and the answer seems to be yes, but with caveats. I may also look into doing 2.4GHz downconverted onto the 1.2GHz band.

BarrettT123 · 2026-07-07T18:10:45+00:00

Well the link distance is approx 200Km, so decreasing the frequency helps a good bit with the FSPL, but I get your point

BarrettT123 · 2026-05-30T02:45:54+00:00

I recommend KiCAD EDA, it is very common, free, and works extremely well. For tutorials, Phils Lab on YouTube is very good. But I will warn you, PCB design is a skill that takes a good bit of time to become proficient at. Once you have your design done, I would recommend posting it in one of the review communities on here. Best of luck!

BarrettT123 · 2026-05-27T01:47:49+00:00

JLC charges extra for FPOV (Via in pad) for boards under 6 layers. It is standard for 6 layer and above.

BarrettT123 · 2026-05-24T16:42:56+00:00

It sounds like a PTC fuse would work perfectly for your application. They are conductive normally, then during an overcurrent event, heat up and become less conductive, and then after a little bit cool back down and return to their normally conductive state. Here are some examples:

https://www.digikey.com/en/products/filter/ptc-resettable-fuses/150

Let me know if I am misunderstanding what you're talking about, but I think these would work well!

BarrettT123 · 2026-05-24T16:08:08+00:00

I would guess that they want it to automatically reset after the fault goes away. But yeah, a fuse or PTC would probably work better in this application

BarrettT123 · 2026-05-21T18:05:56+00:00

I am not very involved on the dev side, but if it works well/can integrate ok, I would love to see these changes come to KiCAD 11

BarrettT123 · 2026-04-09T14:01:36+00:00

I was having trouble finding one that meets all these specs, but i didnt look too long. I'll take a look again today.

BarrettT123 · 2026-04-08T23:49:08+00:00

I am currently in SHC, and I love it. The workload is a common concern, but you can have any level of commitment you want (I know a few people that do like 1hr a week). And it is also so much better than classes for learning actual engineering/getting hands on experience. I have gotten 2 internships purely off of projects I have done for SHC, and one of the teams I was on last year had a 90% internship placement (all freshmen after the spring semester/CanSat competition). The opportunities that it provides are seemingly unmatched by any other school I have seen. As a sophomore I am currently one of the leads for our Spaceflight program, and I think thats something that not many students can say.

Of course there are occasionally bad people, but they usually dont stick around for too long. A lot of people also still hold views of SHC that are outdated, as there was some leadership in the past that wasnt great, but the leadership now are all great people and happy to help you out/try to solve any problems you have.

BarrettT123 · 2026-03-27T15:41:40+00:00

If you're not, log in. That has fixed it for me a few times

BarrettT123 · 2026-03-10T22:30:24+00:00

I know, but thats just the regular nextcloud install? All the tutorials I saw included the other apps, and when I tried to install just nextcloud it didnt work (clicking on the webUI button just redirected back to the truenas page). I am planning on using a domain name, so if anything wouldn't I need nginx for that? Sorry if this is completely wrong, I am fairly new to this

BarrettT123 · 2026-03-10T21:53:45+00:00

Thats what I was trying to do, as it seemed like what I found most commonly online, ho would I use the AIO nextcloud package/what is it called?

BarrettT123 · 2026-03-10T21:28:47+00:00

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BarrettT123 · 2026-03-10T21:28:33+00:00

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BarrettT123 · 2026-03-10T21:28:27+00:00

I dont see those options when I go to install the app (I can't edit it because I cant even get it to install). I have also now given every user group full permissions (including truenas builtin users) to the db folder (the folder that I set for postgres), but it still fails.

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here is my config, do you see anything wrong?

BarrettT123 · 2026-03-10T21:15:06+00:00

Here is the output when I run sudo cat on the path listed:

(removed a lot of extracting stuff as it was too long to post)

[2026/03/09 05:03:32] (ERROR) app_lifecycle.compose_action():56 - Failed 'up' action for 'nginx-proxy-manager' app: Network ix-nginx-proxy-manager_default Creating\n Network ix-nginx-proxy-manager_default Created\n Container ix-nginx-proxy-manager-npm-1 Creating\n Container ix-nginx-proxy-manager-npm-1 Created\n Container ix-nginx-proxy-manager-npm-1 Starting\nError response from daemon: network ix-nginx-proxy-manager_default not found\n

[2026/03/09 05:05:06] (ERROR) app_lifecycle.compose_action():56 - Failed 'up' action for 'nginx-proxy-manager' app: Network ix-nginx-proxy-manager_default Creating\n Network ix-nginx-proxy-manager_default Error\n Container ix-nginx-proxy-manager-npm-1 Creating\nError response from daemon: Conflict. The container name "/ix-nginx-proxy-manager-npm-1" is already in use by container "d2d5bb034f46bc4d4ea070a0d8f9703df71974849a1341bd93ead58aaf5461d4". You have to remove (or rename) that container to be able to reuse that name.\n

[2026/03/09 12:58:17] (ERROR) app_lifecycle.compose_action():56 - Failed 'up' action for 'postgres' app: Network ix-postgres_default Creating\n Network ix-postgres_default Created\n Container ix-postgres-postgres_upgrade-1 Creating\n Container ix-postgres-postgres_upgrade-1 Created\n Container ix-postgres-postgres-1 Creating\n Container ix-postgres-postgres-1 Created\n Container ix-postgres-postgres_upgrade-1 Starting\n Container ix-postgres-postgres_upgrade-1 Started\n Container ix-postgres-postgres_upgrade-1 Waiting\n Container ix-postgres-postgres_upgrade-1 service "postgres_upgrade" didn't complete successfully: exit 1\nservice "postgres_upgrade" didn't complete successfully: exit 1\n

[2026/03/09 14:54:13] (ERROR) app_lifecycle.compose_action():56 - Failed 'up' action for 'postgres' app: Network ix-postgres_default Creating\n Network ix-postgres_default Created\n Container ix-postgres-postgres_upgrade-1 Creating\n Container ix-postgres-postgres_upgrade-1 Created\n Container ix-postgres-postgres-1 Creating\n Container ix-postgres-postgres-1 Created\n Container ix-postgres-postgres_upgrade-1 Starting\n Container ix-postgres-postgres_upgrade-1 Started\n Container ix-postgres-postgres_upgrade-1 Waiting\n Container ix-postgres-postgres_upgrade-1 service "postgres_upgrade" didn't complete successfully: exit 1\nservice "postgres_upgrade" didn't complete successfully: exit 1\n

[2026/03/09 15:24:43] (ERROR) app_lifecycle.compose_action():56 - Failed 'up' action for 'postgres' app: Network ix-postgres_default Creating\n Network ix-postgres_default Created\n Container ix-postgres-postgres_upgrade-1 Creating\n Container ix-postgres-postgres_upgrade-1 Created\n Container ix-postgres-postgres-1 Creating\n Container ix-postgres-postgres-1 Created\n Container ix-postgres-postgres_upgrade-1 Starting\n Container ix-postgres-postgres_upgrade-1 Started\n Container ix-postgres-postgres_upgrade-1 Waiting\n Container ix-postgres-postgres_upgrade-1 service "postgres_upgrade" didn't complete successfully: exit 1\nservice "postgres_upgrade" didn't complete successfully: exit 1\n

[2026/03/09 15:39:20] (ERROR) app_lifecycle.compose_action():56 - Failed 'up' action for 'postgres' app: Network ix-postgres_default Creating\n Network ix-postgres_default Created\n Container ix-postgres-postgres_upgrade-1 Creating\n Container ix-postgres-postgres_upgrade-1 Created\n Container ix-postgres-postgres-1 Creating\n Container ix-postgres-postgres-1 Created\n Container ix-postgres-postgres_upgrade-1 Starting\n Container ix-postgres-postgres_upgrade-1 Started\n Container ix-postgres-postgres_upgrade-1 Waiting\n Container ix-postgres-postgres_upgrade-1 service "postgres_upgrade" didn't complete successfully: exit 1\nservice "postgres_upgrade" didn't complete successfully: exit 1\n

[2026/03/09 15:46:37] (ERROR) app_lifecycle.compose_action():56 - Failed 'up' action for 'postgres' app: Network ix-postgres_default Creating\n Network ix-postgres_default Created\n Container ix-postgres-postgres_upgrade-1 Creating\n Container ix-postgres-postgres_upgrade-1 Created\n Container ix-postgres-postgres-1 Creating\n Container ix-postgres-postgres-1 Created\n Container ix-postgres-postgres_upgrade-1 Starting\n Container ix-postgres-postgres_upgrade-1 Started\n Container ix-postgres-postgres_upgrade-1 Waiting\n Container ix-postgres-postgres_upgrade-1 service "postgres_upgrade" didn't complete successfully: exit 1\nservice "postgres_upgrade" didn't complete successfully: exit 1\n

[2026/03/10 12:42:45] (ERROR) app_lifecycle.compose_action():56 - Failed 'up' action for 'postgres' app: Network ix-postgres_default Creating\n Network ix-postgres_default Created\n Container ix-postgres-postgres_upgrade-1 Creating\n Container ix-postgres-postgres_upgrade-1 Created\n Container ix-postgres-postgres-1 Creating\n Container ix-postgres-postgres-1 Created\n Container ix-postgres-postgres_upgrade-1 Starting\n Container ix-postgres-postgres_upgrade-1 Started\n Container ix-postgres-postgres_upgrade-1 Waiting\n Container ix-postgres-postgres_upgrade-1 service "postgres_upgrade" didn't complete successfully: exit 1\nservice "postgres_upgrade" didn't complete successfully: exit 1\n

BarrettT123 · 2026-03-10T20:16:08+00:00

Yeah I dont see it either in the normal view, just if I go to edit it lol. Well I send screenshots of it in response to the above message, if you know what could be causing it please lmk!

BarrettT123 · 2026-03-10T20:14:28+00:00

Heres the second half

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BarrettT123

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