HAB Tracker Station

Project HAB Tracker Station
Status	in progress"in progress" is not in the list (Proposed, Initializing, In progress, Completed, Stalled, Abandoned) of allowed values for the "Project Status" property.
Contact	User:Costyn_van_Dongen
Last Update	2013-01-04

Project pagina voor het high altitude balloon tracking/listening station dat we voor de space aan het inrichten zijn.

Done

Acquired Hardware

• "ezcap USB 2.0 DVB-T/DAB/FM" dongle, RTL2838U, Fitipower FC0013 tuner, Supported gain values (23): -9.9 -7.3 -6.5 -6.3 -6.0 -5.8 -5.4 5.8 6.1 6.3 6.5 6.7 6.8 7.0 7.1 17.9 18.1 18.2 18.4 18.6 18.8 19.1 19.7
• VK5QI HABamp
• Raspberry Pi
• Test payload, RFM22b sending RTTY strings on 434.250MHz. Code here: https://github.com/costyn/rfmtest/blob/master/rfmtest.pde

Software

• Sending test payload --> works!
• Sending data from rtl_tcp on RasPi over the network --> works! (1024000 samples/second seems to go fine when both are on a wired connection)
• gqrx to listen to audio --> works!
• dl-fldigi RTTY decoding --> works!
• Testing VNC performance with gqrx and dl-fldigi --> usable with JPEG compression and 8 bits of color

Todo

• Setting up a virtual machine with gqrx and dl-fldigi

revspace@habraspi:~$ rtl_tcp -a 10.42.43.20

Found 1 device(s). Found Fitipower FC0013 tuner

Using ezcap USB 2.0 DVB-T/DAB/FM dongle

Todo

• Site survey roof, check if there is already some sort of lightning protection system, and see if we can add some metal construction to it ourselfs
• Currently we have no antenna. Well need some heavy duty (directional?) antenna.
  • Do we make one or do we buy one?
  • What kind of antenna? (keep in mind we only have line of sight towards south/southwest)
• Find and buy IP56 enclosure: http://linitx.com/product/13265
• Routing Ethernet (with PoE) towards the roof, possibly using (something like) this: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/200841109556
• Your ideas, we love them!