HAB Tracker Station

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!
• Using rtl_tcp from RasPi over network --> works!
• gqrx to listen to audio --> works! (250000 samples/seconds), freq seems to go even up to 434,227,925 (center 434,225,517)
• dl-fldigi RTTY decoding --> works!
• rtl-sdr compiled from git on Raspberry Pi: --> works!

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 send and receive with just some breadboard cables. Works fine in the lab but we need some heavy duty antenna outside.
  • 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)
• Enclosure spec-en en aanschaffen
• Routing 230v and Ethernet towards the roof
• Your ideas, we love them!