AmateurRadio.com

After a few weeks of testing SatNOGS production Ground Station 33 is up and running. I think there are quite a lot of improvements to be made but essentially the non-rotator set up is looking average at best but reliable enough to be a production ground station. So in honour of the RF sinkhole that sucks up useful signals I call home, it has been named St Bees GS (well the reality of it is that I couldn’t think of a suitable name). So what is next?

First on the list is a new RPi. The current one is working but coughs and splutters a bit with some of the hard work. So I’ll be ordering a new one in due course. Secondly is settling on an antenna system. Currently the turnstile works but I can’t help think that a QFH, or maybe a pair (one for vhf and one for uhf) would be better. The last thing on the list is to resurrect the rotator. After setting fire to a few driver boards in the past I’ve ordered a new board and PSU and we’ll see if we can repeat the v1 success.

Trouble is, domestic duties will be spoiling plans but then again I do like a good game of rugby and a bacon roll in the winter sunshine is a good alternative. L’al fella (for all the Cumbrian folk) has had back to back games for the last 5 weeks and he’s keen to keep up the winning streak. More progress to follow.

Onwards and upwards (literally in this case)

The 3D printed satNOGS rotator that a few of us are building lives. Its a big deal for us as its taken us a while to get to this point. There’s still quite a few things to sort out but its good to see the thing running. Here’s the proof

Nice to see that SatNOGS won the hackaday prize this evening. A little sad that PortableSDR didn’t win as well. They both prove that Ham Radio is alive and kicking and has a very well rooted place in the 21st century……As if it was ever in doubt

Pinched from hackaday.com

I remember reading something about this on the Southgate ARC news a while ago. When I tried to find it I couldn’t. Thanks to Hackaday.io I found it again.

So what is it. The website has some big ideas on it but, to me it is a homebrew, simple Az El rotator using open source software and 3D printed parts. Something that, funding willing, I will be able to do over the winter. Info on availability seems a bit scarce but I’ve emailed regarding PCB’s.

Here’s a few links and a video

Hackaday.io Project page

Website

I’ve had a mechanically completed SatNOGS ground station sitting in my garage in need of some care and attention for a while. Its just one of the projects that that I have filed under ‘ working but not very robust’. Essentially after I killed off the first driver board we have not managed to get it to drive properly (that is without smoke pouring out of motor driver’s).

Fortunately the SatNOGS gang have made it much easier to load up the client software on a RPi and run a rotator free ground station on the development site. So over the weekend I have produced a standalone set up in between going to the 2nd harmonics rugby festival under the moniker Ground Station 170

The set up is very simple get yourself a RPi 3, an rtl-sdr dongle and a simple antenna (I used this one which took all of 10 minutes to make) and have scheduled a few passes to see if it works. There is some info here if you’d like to have a go

If you have a few moments you can look at the other SatNOGS stuff such as the recently presented video.