Guide to co-ordinating RF using the RF Explorer

READ THE MANUAL PLEASE

CAUTION

Be gentle with the SMA antenna connectors as they are fragile.

RF Explorer is a very sensitive device. It can detect signals as low as -120dBm, which is 10E-12mW or 9nA over a 50ohm load.

This extreme sensitivity comes at the price of fragility; your device needs care handling and protection in order to run for many years without problems.

Most RF technicians know the RF instruments have to be protected in order to survive the high Electro Magnetic (EM) fields that may be in the environment. Expensive instruments like $50,000 full sized Spectrum Analyzers and Signal Analyzers comes with a long list of handling procedures the operator must observe in order to limit any chance of damage. Unfortunatelly, the fact that RF Explorer is a cheaper device doesn't mean it can work without protection.

The first and most obvious precaution is to make sure the input RF power is not beyond the acceptable levels of the instrument.

RF Explorer 6G (ours) , 3G Combo and WSUB3G models are well protected up to +30dBm (1Watt) input power, which is plenty to play safe in pretty much any environment.

However, other RF Explorer models have a maximum safe input power of +5dBm, which is 3mW in the RF SMA port. As an reference, that is the power captured by the RF antenna from a cell phone a distance of 10cm, or from a Microwave oven at about 1 meter distance. Not all the ovens or cell phones work the same, so take this as an indication only.

What may not be obvious to all users is this is a limit in any RF frequency band, even if the RF Explorer is powered off.

As an example, the RF Explorer WSUB1G -with a frequency range of 240-960MHzwill not detect a microwave oven (2.4GHz) on the screen but can be very well damaged by it. Similarly, a strong 2m HAM or FM high power transmit station won’t be detected by this model, but still induces enough RF power to kill the RF circuitry with ease. And that doesn’t depend on RF Explorer being on or off because the antenna will receive that powerful signal and will inject it into the spectrum analyzer, with serious risk of damage.


In addition to RF power, you should reduce the likelihood of static discharge over the antenna. In particular, the naked metallic antennas such as the Nagoya telescopic antenna we include in the wideband models. The whip helical plastic antennas included in the narrow band models do not expose the internal contact to the outside world and thus are safer from ESD perspective because don't offer a direct current path to the internal sensitive CMOS component pin, but all metallic antennas needs you to observe good ESD practices, most importantly in very dry winter air: Make sure you have a good hand contact with the metal case of the RF Explorer before touching the antenna and, whenever possible, do not touch the antenna with your hands.

For this very same reason, you should never make contact with the antenna to any external energy source. Just imagine what power can be injected inside if you make the antenna contact AC current or a powerful AC source of any kind!

If the RF Explorer RF circuitry is damaged, you will need to send it back for repair, taking time and cost so we strongly suggest using one or several standard procedures used for decades by RF technicians to protect your instrument:

TAKING SPECTRUM SCANS AND IMPORTING INTO SHURE WIRELESS WORKBENCH AND/OR SENNHEISER WIRELESS SYSTEMS MANAGER

Connect the RF Explorer Via USB to the Macbook Turn the Explorer on. (While connected via USB it will work in off postion but wont be charging the battery)
Using the Audio Dept Macbook Pro open Virtual Box and start the instance of Windows 10, it will run INSIDE MacOS as a Virtual Machine.
Username and Password are the same as all audio computers.

Open Touchstone Pro Spectrum Analyzer Software in the version of Windows that opens.

SET THE SCAN PARAMETERS IN TOUCHSTONE

Scan Mode = Spectrum Analysis
Set Resolution Bandwidth RBW to 25000 (25KHz) The distance between selectable frequencies on our Wireless Mics)
Next will be Frequency Range Selection. Too large of a range here will require selecting a larger RBW so you may have to do seperate scans of
multiple ranges to preserve the 25KHz RBW Not a problem as the script We run later will join them together.
Start = The beginning of desired range in MHz
End = The end of desired range in Mhz (Unfortunately these values cannot be changed with the keyboard you must click in the number box ...
clear it ... use the popup box and mouse to enter the numbers.)

Hit Start just above this Righthand section of the screen. The longer the scan runs the more ability it has to capture intermittent/one-off events.

SAVING THE SCAN (S)

Once satisfied with the length of time the scan has run hit Stop
Go to tools > Export last trace
Choose Use Max Trace > CSV Format #2 Wireless Workbench as output format, Set Apply Frequency Boundaries to 25000 (25KHz)
Save it in a Usefully named new folder in \\VBOXSVR\Downloads\TouchstoneScans\Useful-Foldername\Useful-Filename.csv (this folder is the only one that will be visible to MAC OS if you switch over to it for further operations)

I've written a Windows Powershell script that enables you browse to, and select the pertinent .csv spectrum scan file(s) that were output by your RF Explorer device, sorts them by creation time, joins them together and outputs 2 seperate files, plus the original un-modified scan files, into a newly created subdirectory named with the current date and time. (the original .csv files retain their dates for future reference)

There is a shortcut to the script on the desktop of the virtual Windows. Open the script. In the toolbar there is a little green right facing arrow ... click it and the script will run. Follow its prompts. After filling in the Scan Details form that pops up a window should pop up to select the files you want to work with. If you don't see it chances are it is behind the main window, in that case minimize the main script window and select the files to work with.

RFexplorer-Touchstone-Shure-Senn-Export.ps1 is the filename of the script.

1. SHURE-importable

Shure Wireless workbench accepts .csv files consisting of 2 columns (no Headers) > Frequency in MHz,Level in DBm (columns seperated by a comma)
492.6,-103
492.625,-96
492.65,-102
492.675,-99

2. SENNHEISER-Importable

Sennheiser Wireless Systems Manager is more complicated. They expect a descriptive 2 column header then 3 columns of data
Frequency in KHz;;Level in DB (columns seperated by a semi-colon)

Receiver;01
Date/Time;$datetime
RFUnit;dB
Owner;$FirstName $LastName
ScanCity;$ScanCity $ScanStateProvince $ScanCountry
ScanComment;
ScanCountry;$ScanCountry
ScanDescription;$ScanDescription
ScanInteriorExterior;$ScanInteriorORExterior
ScanLatitude;
ScanLongitude;
ScanName;$ScanName
ScanPostalCode;$ScanPostalCode

Frequency Range [kHz];$FreqRangeL;$FreqRangeH;$FreqSpan
Frequency;RF level (%);RF level
492600;;4
492625;;11
492650;;5
492675;;8

The $variables in the Sennheiser header get pulled from the info you enter into an initial popup dialog. I incorporated this so you could archive AND/OR upload a zip file of the original RF Explorer scan chunks along with the 2 formatted files and a descriptive text file to an online database of venue scans from around the world.

http://www.bestaudio.com/spectrum-scans/

Or any other purpose you may have for them

I am using Nuts AboutNets Touchstone Pro Software $49US

http://nutsaboutnets.com/touchstone/

to interact with the RF Explorer for setting scan parameters and actually running the scans. The native software that comes with RF explorer can do everything but I found it time consuming to break the spectrum down into smaller chunks to increase resolution'