Possible to convert an unused Airtel DTH dish and corresponding cabling to an FM antenna for better reception?

[PCA]

First one you have listed is almost Omnidirectional and works for decent distance range. In your case, I would recommend this one as the second one which is Yagi is directional. Being in Kochi you have signals available from 3 directions. Most probably you will be able to capture stations from Thiruvananthapuram to Kozhikode. Some Srilankan and Kodai, Ooty stations. Which are in different directions.
Yagi will give you stronger signals than the first one. But you will have to rotate it if you want to get stations from the other directions.

That is very helpful. Gracias

 

[zero7]

Thanks a ton. Thrilled to know I am not the only person on this forum using a seemingly 'low-fi' item like this

One question - would having an outdoor antenna, as opposed to an internal telescopic antenna, do away completely with the LED interference issues?

Not at all. I use an FM board (used to get at ₹80-90 in 90s) fitted inside an old radio cabinet with 18650 battery as power source. Lol.
Infact earlier electronic chokes interferes more than the LED bulbs. Only way is trial and error. If you are a DIY kind of person, try to reduce the length of unshielded antenna wire to bare minimum and that helps reducing the noise.

Most of the time I use music being played from a SD card, in the player as attached. It has similar board what you are using. But quality of FM radio is not so good in this and it's mono. I connect an external FM radio (Tecsun PL-310) to this for listening to radio

 

[reubensm]

Yes, its a low-fi item and often referred to as the 'poor man's streamer' but so what, i use it for low-fi purposes. Being a 80's aficionado, especially with the Glam and Heavy Metal Genre, YouTube is an important source of music, especially for obscure bands and albums. There is no point spending a couple of hundred thousands on a high end streamer for listening to YouTube music. This low-fi box with a Behringer DEQ 2496 gets the job done for me . For making it truly DIY, I am also using a salvaged pen-drive board in an external casing as my 'external hard disk'. I maintain this to add a DIY flavour to my rack (its the only DIY box on it).



To answer your question about LED interference, I have done a lot of experiments with this aspect. Yes I have noticed that LEDs cause interference especially if wired to the same powersupply. I assume that this is because the board itself does not have suitable filtering. I solved the problem by avoiding flashing multi-colour LEDs and also by placing the power LED in the PSU circuit with its ballast resistor, just at the point where the rectified 5 volts comes out from a salvaged smartphone PSU board. The PSU rails then run through a 7805 regulator with filter caps on either side before feeding the mp3 board. The use of a proper antenna also reduces interference. However I dont use this box for FM. That duty is done by my NAD 401 tuner, which wifey uses for FM listening.

Here's a peep inside my DIY box



I have also accomplished a couple more tricks with this. This board had a bare minimum LCD display without the spectrum analyzer display. A friend of mine gave me a mp3 board which had stopped working. I took out its LCD display and transplanted it into this one, now I have a fancy spectrum analyzer display. I also checked with the friend what had happened to his mp3 board. He told me that he used it with a DIY amplifier wired to a volume POT in an incorrect way, which resulted in shorting the line out wires when he turned the volume down to zero. As a result, the board lights up and all functions work, but no sound comes out of it (obviously the output section may have blown). Using his experience, i introduced a small network on the line output socket to protect my board from short circuit related failures.

 

[OM_2K19]

Is this a remote possibility or a fool's errand?

Theoretically possible. But to provide a substantial gain over the FM bandwidth, the antenna will have to be huge. Thus, a parabolic antenna may not be an ideal solution to be used as an FM receiver. You can use this tool to calculate the gain of the DTH antenna (aperture efficiency is around 80% for a DTH antenna).

Parabolic Reflector Antenna Gain Calculator - everything RF

www.everythingrf.com

 

[PCA]

Yes, its a low-fi item and often referred to as the 'poor man's streamer' but so what, i use it for low-fi purposes. Being a 80's aficionado, especially with the Glam and Heavy Metal Genre, YouTube is an important source of music, especially for obscure bands and albums. There is no point spending a couple of hundred thousands on a high end streamer for listening to YouTube music. This low-fi box with a Behringer DEQ 2496 gets the job done for me . For making it truly DIY, I am also using a salvaged pen-drive board in an external casing as my 'external hard disk'. I maintain this to add a DIY flavour to my rack (its the only DIY box on it).

View attachment 63839

To answer your question about LED interference, I have done a lot of experiments with this aspect. Yes I have noticed that LEDs cause interference especially if wired to the same powersupply. I assume that this is because the board itself does not have suitable filtering. I solved the problem by avoiding flashing multi-colour LEDs and also by placing the power LED in the PSU circuit with its ballast resistor, just at the point where the rectified 5 volts comes out from a salvaged smartphone PSU board. The PSU rails then run through a 7805 regulator with filter caps on either side before feeding the mp3 board. The use of a proper antenna also reduces interference. However I dont use this box for FM. That duty is done by my NAD 401 tuner, which wifey uses for FM listening.

Here's a peep inside my DIY box

View attachment 63840

I have also accomplished a couple more tricks with this. This board had a bare minimum LCD display without the spectrum analyzer display. A friend of mine gave me a mp3 board which had stopped working. I took out its LCD display and transplanted it into this one, now I have a fancy spectrum analyzer display. I also checked with the friend what had happened to his mp3 board. He told me that he used it with a DIY amplifier wired to a volume POT in an incorrect way, which resulted in shorting the line out wires when he turned the volume down to zero. As a result, the board lights up and all functions work, but no sound comes out of it (obviously the output section may have blown). Using his experience, i introduced a small network on the line output socket to protect my board from short circuit related failures.

Terribly jealous of your DIY skills My DIY skills do not extend beyond installing a few banana plugs

 

[PCA]

Theoretically possible. But to provide a substantial gain over the FM bandwidth, the antenna will have to be huge. Thus, a parabolic antenna may not be an ideal solution to be used as an FM receiver. You can use this tool to calculate the gain of the DTH antenna (aperture efficiency is around 80% for a DTH antenna).

Parabolic Reflector Antenna Gain Calculator - everything RF

www.everythingrf.com

Thanks