Make Blog Posting

Hi to everyone who might have come here from the Make Blog posting on satpack! It was very kind of the author there to summarize this project and provide the links to the code and this site. Allow me to provide one small clarification to some of the postings around the web: the chip being used in the demo is the ATMega328, standard in current-generation Arduino boards. You can run the satpack code on a AtMega328 with a realtime clock and nothing more.

One caveat: at present, the C code that uploads Keplerian elements to the satpack only compiles on MacOS and Linux. I plan to move the serial communications part of this code to a scripting language with cross-platform serial support, like Ruby.

As previous posts here note, I am targeting the '644p as well, in part because it offers me the overhead to run debugging code alongside the stock, and because it has a second hardware serial port so I can work on CAT command of the radio without worrying about software serial port timing issues, if any.

But the near-term goal is a small 'shield' or daughterboard for the Arduino Pro Mini that will provide the realtime clock and battery, and expose the right pins to a mini-din 8 cable for the ACC port on the '817 radio, while allowing the user to update keps through the usual port.

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