I'm not sure if the HackRF's bias was turned on or not, but at any rate both U14 (an RF switch) and U25 (the TX amp) were blown and had to be bypassed.Īfter receiving some MGA-81563 spares, today I replaced blown U25 (Tx LNA) on my HackRF One (Original Rx LNA is still good). It was connected through some attenuators, but I don't think that protects you against DC bias voltages. In that case, I think the receiver put out a DC bias voltage for the LNB. My friend also damaged his HackRF transmit capabilities when testing it in the lab with a DVB-S2 receiver. (There are also some people around here who can decap and image chips with a SEM, so that might be interesting?) I could send you both the amp and the HackRF for analysis if you'd like. It looks like the input to the amp is AC-coupled through a cap. I suspect it might have died at Toorcamp 2016 when I tried to hook it up to a sketchy 1.5W PA from eBay, although I'm not exactly sure what might have caused that. There doesn't appear to be any change in gain with the RX amp turned off or on, but when I turn the TX amp on, the signal disappears. I wish I could tell you exactly what went wrong with my HackRF, but both of my amps are blown. If you have experienced this failure and have some idea of how it happened, please comment with any information that could help us reproduce the condition.

If you enable a damaged amplifier, the power level drops instead. Less frequently we have seen damage to the TX RF amplifier (U25, same part number), and we are interested in characterizing that failure as well.ĭiagnosis of either failure is straightforward: If you enable a working amplifier, the power level should rise. Regardless of whether or not damaged units have been subjected to power levels exceeding the maximum specification, we would like to characterize the conditions under which the RF amplifier may be damaged and reproduce the failure in the lab. However, it is possible to exceed that limit by operating a HackRF One in close proximity to a higher power radio transmitter, something that many users would like to be able to do safely. This has been known for a long time some tips for avoiding damage may be found in this video:Īs far as we know, damage does not occur without exceeding the -5 dBm limit documented here: The RF receive amplifier (U13, part number MGA-81563-TR1G) on HackRF One seems to be damaged in the field more than any other component.

Hackrf one amplifier