RE: MSi chips based hardware

shabaz — Tue, 02 Jul 2024 16:41:57 GMT

Do you mean boards based on Mirics MSI2500+MSI001 chipset?

You say you're not asking about software, but that's pretty fundamental when discussing hardware based on this chipset. Reason being, the only boards that perform "OK" are the ones that have software that was developed in conjunction with Mirics input.

That chipset was never designed for (non-broadcast) 14 MHz use, and 430 MHz use, so any hardware you purchase will always be sub-optimal or even poor, but, the hardware that was developed with the Mirics team input, is supposedly better. That means the SDRPlay hardware basically.

There's also a second reason; the (most usable) software is only licensed for SDRplay receivers, you'll just hear white noise if you try a different board. There is some open source software but involves a lot of work.

There's a teardown and discussion of another board here: [mention:34890dd05b2f42c2bea08158af117af7:f7d226abd59f475c9d224a79e3f0ec07]

Notice how visually, the board at that link looks great; no cold solder joints/missing parts. But then look at the block diagram for the board, notice it was never designed for 430 MHz, and has very little filtering; for instance, the entire HF range has a single filter. Plus, looking at some of the inputs on a VNA (I only looked at one input) and it was badly matched to 50 ohm.

There are far better SDRs than the ones using the Mirics chipset, but will cost more. Plus, most will require additional work especially with filtering, but also with up-conversion since most are not designed for HF. If you want something that doesn't require all that work, then the solution is to buy a complete ready-made receiver with SDR architecture, or (compromise for the reasons mentioned) something like the SDRplay products would be the best of the bunch based on the Mirics chipset if you're dead set on that.