😀 Funny! Actually, my wife's (not my mother-in-law) CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machine does indeed make noise on HF. Not really life support, but... 🙂
A lot of videos about noise have the signals in SSB (CW in your case). I think AM mode often shows more clearly how severe the noise is. And probably easier to hear from another room.
I just now did a side-by-side comparison. In the case of hash noise like we were hunting down, the difference was much more apparent in single side band mode. The static sound on AM with no signal present was almost an indistinguishable difference when the noise was there or not. The ideal situation would be to have somebody sitting next to the radio watching the s meter.
Kevin, I encourage you to take this to the next level. Add a proper capacitor and shunt that noise to ground within the robot equipment. Show how we can filter that noise at the source. I once had a very noisy electric fuel pump in a vehicle that I added a capacitor between the positive lead to ground eliminating the noise.
There's so many variables that it's never a one size fits all solution. The noise could be radiating off the power cord from the switching power supply. Or it could be radiating off the internal wiring from the DC side of the power supply. Or it could be radiating off the microprocessor board and control electronics in the base station. Or it could be radiating off the microcontroller board in the robot itself or its power circuitry. Not something I want to get into for this situation when all I have to do is unplug the robot when I want to play on the radio. And I have other projects that I need to spend my limited energy on. I'm still quite ill so I only get about 3 to 4 hours in the morning of productive time.
I do this every once in a while. And i ALWAYS suggest this when noise comes up in the chats etc. Radio on battery and start tripping breakers. More often than not, the noise is in our own homes.
I use an AM transistor radio set to around 1100 khz. The ferrite antenna will even help with the direction finding. This usually works for me. Thanks for the video.
I had noise at 40 and 80... during my christmas holiday...... I tracked down Christmas tree lights...with a chinese power supply....noise gone and old fasion christmas tree lights installed
A USB SDR and a laptop is a portable HF receiver. It's also really cool to have a battery power HF transceiver to gather data during power outages. Suddenly your whole noise floor is nearly S0... I kinda need that Tiny Spectrum Analyzer
Two years ago she was at her brother's for the week.. time to find the birdie. Tossed every breaker one by one. Removed every wall wart every battery charger. Grounded and rebonded. Lost the birdie but it took me all day. Pretty routine. But still anyoing..
Excellent video :-) Using that method last year, I was able to eliminate noise from : A PC power supply, a monitor, a cheap power adapter, and, of course, Christmas lights :-)
Thank you. Hope you had a Merry Christmas. Have a Happy New Year. I turn off all the breakers. Sometimes, it’s the neighbors gear. Saves time. Glen, N0QFT
We named our first robot vacuum Rosie, too. The 2nd one is named Blanca, because it's all white. Uninspired, I know, but they're both working, so we couldn't give them the same name!
@@loughkb Thanks for the reply! Might be a good topic for another short video for your viewers? I suspect some (many?) may not know how to fix the problem if it is caused by something which cannot be left unplugged.
Maybe. The problem is every piece of equipment is going to be different and probably require different solutions. It's a very broad topic with no one size fits all solution.
I've used this method, but the first thing I did was to turn off the main to check to see if the noise was actually coming from my house! If you're not sure where the noise is coming from definitely turn off the main first and also connect the radio that you're using to track the noise to a battery power so it will still run when you turn off the main! I can see it happening. Someone's going to try these method the way it was described in this video and get to the last breaker, and the noise doesn't go away! LOL!
Last summer I got a robot mower. Wasn’t giving me wideband hash, but repeated birdies across many bands. Only when it was parked in the charging “garage”. Easy to deal with. If it was ever giving me trouble where I intended to try to work someone, I could connect to it with my phone, pull it out from its charger, and let it sit. Back it into the charger again when I was done hamming.
It was reported that during ww2 in occupied cities the Germans used similar to help identify "spy" transmissions... They just turned the power off to half a city to see if it went away... It was only occupied foreigners who were inconvenienced so no sweat. Hence the imperative to run off batteries for your tx.
Such a simple way to find the noise source. Thanks. Have a great new year and the best for 2025. Wow. hard to imagine that is is 25 years since the 2000 collapse saga of all time based electronics. Spent so much time testing computers and other equipment to ensure that it would indeed work when 2000.occured on our clocks. What a waste of manpower and time resources. Best of 2025 to you Kevin. Thanks for your continued contribution to am radio and electronics.. 73 VE6HDH
I think it's hard to quantify any one particular setting. It's all subjective. I was looking at a relative measurement. True local noise floor? I suppose you could use a calibrated spectrum analyzer. Every rig though is going to have a different configuration in the front end, a different amount of default amplification. But sure, turn the gain up so you have good deflection on your s meter and watch it for a moment so you have an average to compare to.
Several years back when I got a new, modern, spindle-less washing machine, the noise was awful when it was running with it's variable speed motor. DE K5AVJ
What about making a sniffer. A piece of coax with a short circuit at the end with 100mm of centre wire protruding the short circuit. Then take your handhekd radio or scanner around till you locate the source of the interference signal.
Right at the beginning of the video I talked about using portable devices like that... Then, asked, what if you're a casual ham who only has an HF radio and a couple of HT's.. Which was the target audience for the rest of the video.
Mein Pmr empfängt jeden Abend auf 44⁶,...Kanal 3 für 3 Stunden ein rauschen mit unmoduliertem Träger.Hier ist ein Neubaublock mit DSL wo das Ticken der DSL hörbar wird. Das Pmr rauschen kann auch von einer defekten Wetterstation der Nachbarschaft kommen...😂😂😂🎉❤
In my apartment, I have bad VHF (lower end of broadcast FM) that comes from the kitchen lights (flourescent) . I have been begging my useless property manager to replace them for over two years. He finally agreed to look into it. What sort of lights would be best? LED? I mainly listen to FM/MW/SW.
LED lights are a toss up. Some will create lots of noise if they use a built in power supply, others may not. If they're running off the mains, maybe they'll just use passive resistance and not generate much noise.
Nice radio support for that yeasu. Almost can see your breath, Kevin..rumors and bets are up here in the mitt, Kingman might see an Alberta clip of (the white stuff), some voices saying a historical + six inches..🥶, a good source of water.... fifty days to go til the Az warmth kicks in . Happy new year Kevin . Gary, Kb8qlz
It's been an extremely warm season. We've only dipped below freezing once briefly. Most days are still getting up into the '60s and low 70s. This should be the coldest part of the year. There hasn't even been any snow up on the mountain tops. That 3D printed stand for the Yaesu is available in several forms on thingiverse. Just search for Yaesu 817 there to find it.
Could these high-frequency interference noises explain certain moments when we have the impression of quickly hearing whistles or things like that in our ears? (I'm not joking or making fun of disorders 🫤 I'd just like to understand the basics of certain noises that we sometimes feel like we hear)
If you're talking about that kind of silence and then a tone that you hear that then goes away and the rest of the sound comes back, that's a neurological effect. I read about it years ago. A nerve in the cochlea over stimulates or something. Nothing to do with external sources.
@loughkb Is that really it??? I know this explanation or similar things but, as I said, I'm looking for other interpretations that might seem like good explanations to me. Será que é isso mesmo??? Conheço essa explicação ou coisas semelhantes mas, como falei, estou buscando outras interpretações que possam me parecer boas explicações
I would check your pocket. You probably have this small rectangular device that you use to communicate with people, otherwise known as a smartphone. More than a decade ago, thanks to Snowden leaking information, we knew back then they could track and listen and watch through such a device. And they've had more than 10 years of R&D since then. For finding external devices, a portable spectrum analyzer like the tiny SA would suffice.
@videopyc Yes, I showed the tiny SA. You put in a start frequency and end frequency of the range you want to scan and it shows you a graphical display of all signals in that range. Don't ask me for what frequency ranges to use, I don't know off the top of my head. You'll have to research each device you want to search for to find out what frequencies it transmits on.
I was an ingress egress technician with spectrum and used my expierience in hunting the catv leaks very similar 20 yrs of my life thrown away!!! But i was sought after by tthe tootal region for hard to find leaks
Kevin, Looks like you are home. While a subscriber I haven't followed you closely lately. Looks like you are no longer in your motorhome. What's the story? Dave K8WPE
I was in the RV during the talking head parts. I'm parked on a friends property while recovering and for the cold winter months. Go back on my page and view the vlogs if you want to get up to date.
There is no Wall wort In this case. It's a docking base with its own processor and Wi-Fi interface. Too many possibilities for where the noise is coming from for me to bother with it. I'll just unplug it.
Inverters are notoriously noisy. When I'm out in the RV, I can watch the noise floor rise with the sun from all the other RV's parked around me. In mine, I've set as many items as I can to run directly off the 12V battery power. I rarely have to turn my inverter on.
Thank you! Turns out the noise was coming from my mother-in-law’s life support machines. Pulled the plug and now I can play radio in peace 😉
😀 Funny!
Actually, my wife's (not my mother-in-law) CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machine does indeed make noise on HF. Not really life support, but... 🙂
No yelling at Rosie. Rosie is a good robot. A good robot.
Nah Rosie just gotta clean her act up 😂
Well, a well educated robot do not show the tongue as in the cartoon! ;) ;) 73 de iw2ayv
Next job, modify the charger so that it doesn't produce noise.
Took me back to my childhood with the Rosie and Jetsons 😊
Things heard in a Ham House:
"I'm trying to get Hawaii!!! Someone stop that dishwasher!!!"
A lot of videos about noise have the signals in SSB (CW in your case). I think AM mode often shows more clearly how severe the noise is. And probably easier to hear from another room.
I just now did a side-by-side comparison. In the case of hash noise like we were hunting down, the difference was much more apparent in single side band mode. The static sound on AM with no signal present was almost an indistinguishable difference when the noise was there or not.
The ideal situation would be to have somebody sitting next to the radio watching the s meter.
A great way to find noise, a lot of new hams never think of this!
Great video ! Quick tip: after unplugging an item wait for a second or two for internal capacitors to discharge - then the noise goes away.
This works by "breaking down" the problem. Excellent 👌
Kevin, I encourage you to take this to the next level. Add a proper capacitor and shunt that noise to ground within the robot equipment. Show how we can filter that noise at the source.
I once had a very noisy electric fuel pump in a vehicle that I added a capacitor between the positive lead to ground eliminating the noise.
There's so many variables that it's never a one size fits all solution. The noise could be radiating off the power cord from the switching power supply. Or it could be radiating off the internal wiring from the DC side of the power supply. Or it could be radiating off the microprocessor board and control electronics in the base station. Or it could be radiating off the microcontroller board in the robot itself or its power circuitry.
Not something I want to get into for this situation when all I have to do is unplug the robot when I want to play on the radio. And I have other projects that I need to spend my limited energy on. I'm still quite ill so I only get about 3 to 4 hours in the morning of productive time.
I do this every once in a while.
And i ALWAYS suggest this when noise comes up in the chats etc. Radio on battery and start tripping breakers. More often than not, the noise is in our own homes.
I use an AM transistor radio set to around 1100 khz. The ferrite antenna will even help with the direction finding. This usually works for me. Thanks for the video.
Fixing noise, the HF dredded noise. nice easy instruction. cheers kev'
This video deserves 3 Thumbs up.
I’ve been using a tempo 200fp filter probe from my AT&T days to find noisy items plugged in:) it’s worked pretty good for my issues.
I had noise at 40 and 80... during my christmas holiday...... I tracked down Christmas tree lights...with a chinese power supply....noise gone and old fasion christmas tree lights installed
Great timing. Folks will have a lot of new devices from Christmas. Lots of new devices = lots of new potential noise sources. XLNT
A USB SDR and a laptop is a portable HF receiver. It's also really cool to have a battery power HF transceiver to gather data during power outages. Suddenly your whole noise floor is nearly
S0... I kinda need that Tiny Spectrum Analyzer
The tiny SA is a really nice piece of gear.
Two years ago she was at her brother's for the week.. time to find the birdie. Tossed every breaker one by one. Removed every wall wart every battery charger.
Grounded and rebonded. Lost the birdie but it took me all day. Pretty routine. But still anyoing..
So true
Excellent video :-) Using that method last year, I was able to eliminate noise from : A PC power supply, a monitor, a cheap power adapter, and, of course, Christmas lights :-)
Great video, Kevin. Happy New Year from Mishawaka, IN.
it's worse if you have 10 neighbors and they have such robots
Reason 6173 that I'm thankful to be out of an apartment and living rural...neighbor noise (RF and audible) is nonexistent.
@@ohmbug10 HNY and good luck. ;)
And it can be worse if the power utility has old mains that are noisy. It's a double-whammy!
I use a tiny SA. Handy little bugger. Used to use a pocket am radio. Might be a built in switching power supply in that unit. Good info!
Thank you. Hope you had a Merry Christmas. Have a Happy New Year.
I turn off all the breakers. Sometimes, it’s the neighbors gear. Saves time. Glen, N0QFT
We named our first robot vacuum Rosie, too.
The 2nd one is named Blanca, because it's all white.
Uninspired, I know, but they're both working, so we couldn't give them the same name!
Thanks for sharing. Did you consider whether you can remove the noise by adding chokes to the cables etc?
Yes.
@@loughkb Thanks for the reply! Might be a good topic for another short video for your viewers? I suspect some (many?) may not know how to fix the problem if it is caused by something which cannot be left unplugged.
Maybe. The problem is every piece of equipment is going to be different and probably require different solutions. It's a very broad topic with no one size fits all solution.
@@loughkb True!
A great video. Very helpful. Thank you for posting!
I've used this method, but the first thing I did was to turn off the main to check to see if the noise was actually coming from my house! If you're not sure where the noise is coming from definitely turn off the main first and also connect the radio that you're using to track the noise to a battery power so it will still run when you turn off the main! I can see it happening. Someone's going to try these method the way it was described in this video and get to the last breaker, and the noise doesn't go away! LOL!
Last summer I got a robot mower. Wasn’t giving me wideband hash, but repeated birdies across many bands. Only when it was parked in the charging “garage”. Easy to deal with. If it was ever giving me trouble where I intended to try to work someone, I could connect to it with my phone, pull it out from its charger, and let it sit. Back it into the charger again when I was done hamming.
ruclips.net/video/ME5sQwUxxqc/видео.html
It was reported that during ww2 in occupied cities the Germans used similar to help identify "spy" transmissions... They just turned the power off to half a city to see if it went away... It was only occupied foreigners who were inconvenienced so no sweat. Hence the imperative to run off batteries for your tx.
Such a simple way to find the noise source. Thanks. Have a great new year and the best for 2025. Wow. hard to imagine that is is 25 years since the 2000 collapse saga of all time based electronics. Spent so much time testing computers and other equipment to ensure that it would indeed work when 2000.occured on our clocks. What a waste of manpower and time resources. Best of 2025 to you Kevin. Thanks for your continued contribution to am radio and electronics.. 73 VE6HDH
Problem is , everything is now being sold with junk switching power supplies
Now??? This hasn't started recently
Good technique. Off subject, I love you FT-817 stand. Did you print that or is it commercial?
Printed. It's available on thingiverse, just search for yaesu 817 there and you'll find several variations.
Kevin- when one starts this test, to determine what true local noise floor is, what to you set your RF gain at?Max? Tnx & 73
I think it's hard to quantify any one particular setting. It's all subjective. I was looking at a relative measurement. True local noise floor? I suppose you could use a calibrated spectrum analyzer. Every rig though is going to have a different configuration in the front end, a different amount of default amplification. But sure, turn the gain up so you have good deflection on your s meter and watch it for a moment so you have an average to compare to.
I like simple solutions that don't require tools.
Several years back when I got a new, modern, spindle-less washing machine, the noise was awful when it was running with it's variable speed motor. DE K5AVJ
Happy new year Kevin!
Great Ideas! Thanks
Great video! Thanks!
Guter Tip. Danke.
What about making a sniffer. A piece of coax with a short circuit at the end with 100mm of centre wire protruding the short circuit. Then take your handhekd radio or scanner around till you locate the source of the interference signal.
Right at the beginning of the video I talked about using portable devices like that...
Then, asked, what if you're a casual ham who only has an HF radio and a couple of HT's.. Which was the target audience for the rest of the video.
Great tip thanks
Good Job! Very useful, Thanks!!!
When I want to bring the noise to a sudden standstill I hand my wife a 100 dollar bill and say "Walmart."
Boomers I swear
Mein Pmr empfängt jeden Abend auf 44⁶,...Kanal 3 für 3 Stunden ein rauschen mit unmoduliertem Träger.Hier ist ein Neubaublock mit DSL wo das Ticken der DSL hörbar wird. Das Pmr rauschen kann auch von einer defekten Wetterstation der Nachbarschaft kommen...😂😂😂🎉❤
I named my robovac “Rosie”, too. It was inevitable, having grown up watching The Jetsons…
Will you be doing a follow-up in an attempt to silence Rosy?
Probably not. Easy enough just to unplug it when I want to play radio. If it was a device that needed to be in use often, I might make the effort.
Happy New Year Kevin
on my ic-705 I can always see the noise when I plug the chinese USB charger, that one is very noisy...
And have a Happy New Year!
In my apartment, I have bad VHF (lower end of broadcast FM) that comes from the kitchen lights (flourescent) . I have been begging my useless property manager to replace them for over two years. He finally agreed to look into it. What sort of lights would be best? LED? I mainly listen to FM/MW/SW.
LED lights are a toss up. Some will create lots of noise if they use a built in power supply, others may not. If they're running off the mains, maybe they'll just use passive resistance and not generate much noise.
@ Thanks! Any other suggestions?
👍Good tips, thanks for video Kevin. Rosey on a New Year power diet 😂.
Nice radio support for that yeasu.
Almost can see your breath, Kevin..rumors and bets are up here in the mitt, Kingman might see an Alberta clip of (the white stuff), some voices saying a historical + six inches..🥶, a good source of water.... fifty days to go til the Az warmth kicks in .
Happy new year Kevin .
Gary, Kb8qlz
It's been an extremely warm season. We've only dipped below freezing once briefly. Most days are still getting up into the '60s and low 70s. This should be the coldest part of the year. There hasn't even been any snow up on the mountain tops.
That 3D printed stand for the Yaesu is available in several forms on thingiverse. Just search for Yaesu 817 there to find it.
Could these high-frequency interference noises explain certain moments when we have the impression of quickly hearing whistles or things like that in our ears? (I'm not joking or making fun of disorders 🫤 I'd just like to understand the basics of certain noises that we sometimes feel like we hear)
If you're talking about that kind of silence and then a tone that you hear that then goes away and the rest of the sound comes back, that's a neurological effect. I read about it years ago. A nerve in the cochlea over stimulates or something. Nothing to do with external sources.
@loughkb Is that really it??? I know this explanation or similar things but, as I said, I'm looking for other interpretations that might seem like good explanations to me.
Será que é isso mesmo??? Conheço essa explicação ou coisas semelhantes mas, como falei, estou buscando outras interpretações que possam me parecer boas explicações
Thanks 🙏
Dear Kevin, how would you locate a hidden gps tracking device, or an apple air tag, or a hidden listening device in a house, hotel room or a car?
I would check your pocket. You probably have this small rectangular device that you use to communicate with people, otherwise known as a smartphone. More than a decade ago, thanks to Snowden leaking information, we knew back then they could track and listen and watch through such a device. And they've had more than 10 years of R&D since then.
For finding external devices, a portable spectrum analyzer like the tiny SA would suffice.
@ did you show one spectrum analyzer today? If so how do we use it?
@videopyc Yes, I showed the tiny SA. You put in a start frequency and end frequency of the range you want to scan and it shows you a graphical display of all signals in that range.
Don't ask me for what frequency ranges to use, I don't know off the top of my head. You'll have to research each device you want to search for to find out what frequencies it transmits on.
@@loughkb ... thank you Kevin... i wil do some reasearch
Happy new year Kevin from KC8ARO 73
I was an ingress egress technician with spectrum and used my expierience in hunting the catv leaks very similar 20 yrs of my life thrown away!!!
But i was sought after by tthe tootal region for hard to find leaks
We have RF coming out of the house A/C (South Florida) inside unit 24/7 ..........Rheem
thanks. I found my source of noise at home. it's the inverter of the solar pannels. but unfortunetly I can't stop it. I have no solutions yet.
Quick and easy. Tnx. Al. W5YT
Good move!
Now do power poles outside
Kevin,
Looks like you are home. While a subscriber I haven't followed you closely lately. Looks like you are no longer in your motorhome. What's the story?
Dave K8WPE
I was in the RV during the talking head parts.
I'm parked on a friends property while recovering and for the cold winter months. Go back on my page and view the vlogs if you want to get up to date.
So typical now. Its inevitably something that has a poorly filtered SMPS that causes that kind of RFI. And now it's your Rosie.
Now go power on your furnace again so you won't need your hood up! 😉
I was out in the RV for that segment and doing the editing. A little chillier out there.
4:20 HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA
Eliminate the wall wart and see if it cleans up..
There is no Wall wort In this case. It's a docking base with its own processor and Wi-Fi interface. Too many possibilities for where the noise is coming from for me to bother with it. I'll just unplug it.
I did this and found that it wasn't coming from my home. I'm fairly sure it is my neighbors solar inverters.
Inverters are notoriously noisy. When I'm out in the RV, I can watch the noise floor rise with the sun from all the other RV's parked around me.
In mine, I've set as many items as I can to run directly off the 12V battery power. I rarely have to turn my inverter on.
I have my noisy things plugged into smart switches so I can turn them off from my smartphone when I need to.
Maybe your smart switches are also the noise sources…😂
Inception
Unless it's coming from a neighbour's house. 🙄