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.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Building and Operating a Transmitter from the Roaring 20s

Image
Radio was booming in the 1920s: transmitters had started using the pure tone of 'continuous wave' signals, replacing signals sent with sparks, and increasingly selective and sensitive receiver circuits offered greater range seemingly by the month. Amateurs, not yet able to tame their simple transmitters with crystal-controlled oscillators, constructed them on simple wooden boards with heavy wiring and large inductor coils in order to keep heating from causing their signals to drift. These homebrew transmitters were ongoing experiments in electronics and engineering. The position of a coil might increase output power but cause the signal to sound like a buzzsaw. If you could find a higher voltage power supply, that too would raise its power, but the increased currents in the rig would add more drift: if the other guy can't find your signal wandering up and down the band, what use is that extra 3 watts? The 1929 QSO Party Every year the Antique Wireless Association holds a tw
Read more

Building the AA2TX Parasitic (Or 'Passive') Lindenblad for 70cm

The AA2TX parasitic lindenblad, which was published in Feb 2010 QST (and has been available online for some time), is proving to be an enjoyable project. I have modified some components because I could not find them here in Atlantic Canada. The #8 aluminum wire for the passive elements is not in our big box stores (different wiring regulations?), and the PVC ferrules require a special order, at least at this point in the year, when no sane person would be installing eavestroughing. So I made do with what I had, and the results are encouraging.
Read more

'Satpack' Arduino tracker PCB

Image
Lots of progress with 'satpack', my Arduino-based full-doppler-tuning satellite tracking application. On the right, you see a cardboard mockup of the pcb. On the software side, I've checked a fully working version of the code into the SVN repository.
Read more