VK5FQ | BATC - PortsDown 4

Building a BATC PortsDown 4 transceiver.

Some photos of my build.

Building, testing and running a PortsDown 4 Transceiver.

The British Amateur Television Club (BATC) have developed their PortsDown 4 DATV Transceiver to allow fellow hams an easy option in the creation of building a narrow band DATV transceiver utilising a Raspberry Pi and an SDR transceiver module.

My build of the PortsDown 4 utilises a Raspberry Pi 4, a Raspberry 7" Touch Display, in-built camera, an ADALM Pluto and Mini-Kits low pass filter (LPF). Pre-programmed output selection is for either 70cm or 23cm frequencies.

As well as on board generated Test Patterns, I have utilised an external USB connected camera as a video source for transmissions. Audio is either via camera or via separate USB audio dongle. Connection to my network via ethernet, allows checking for updates via the internet.

The PortsDown 4 is more than just a configurable transmitter. It has a suite of test tools that can be found under the Menu 2 Test Equipment options. I can even use my SDR Play as a spectrum analyser, too! Capture a screenshot, for downloading later... so much in such a simple piece of kit.

Being a member of the BATC, one of the privileges is having access to a hosted output streaming site. This means I can use the PortsDown 4 to stream to this location and other viewers can watch world-wide when I choose to stream content. Awesome!

As an aside, another benefit of being a member of the BATC, you can get delivered a glossy magazine, CQ-TV, every quarter year.