Recent Blog Posts
New Web-based Satellite Tracker of HAM Sats
The Zenith Satellite Tracker is a free, simple to use, web-based applications for tracking all current satellites that provide satellite communications between amateur radio operators. It contains special features for “rovers” and coordination with “friends”. The “off-line” version enables operation of your station’s radio and rotor. However, unlike other applications, this version requires you to…
My 10,000th SatNOGS Observation & 100,000th TinyGS packet
This week, my two satellite tracking stations achieved major milestones. Both has been operational for 4 years. The SatNOGS station receives telemetry on the 2-meter and 70 cm bands using a Raspberry Pi 3B with a RTL-SDR. Its dashboard can be found at https://network.satnogs.org/stations/1561/ The TinyGS station receives telemetry from satellites also in the 70…
ISS Mimic Project on Github
The ISS Mimic Project on Github https://github.com/ISS-Mimic/Mimic/wiki uses the actual live data from the International Space Station to control a 3D-printed model that moves the solar arrays and radiators to track the real ISS in real time. It’s a complex model that’s perfect as a MakerSpace project as it combines 3D printing and assembly with…
What to Contribute to a New Digital Radio Protocol?
M17 Project Seeking Contributors M17 is a new open source VHF digital radio protocol in development as an alternative to those currently available, with freedom in mind. Freedom in the code, protocol, voice codecs, and hardware. The goal is to provide a better option for digital radios in the future. The M17 Working Group is…
For our European students: Only one month left to submit your Mission Space Lab experiment.
Mission Space Lab is part of the European Astro Pi Challenge, an ESA Education project run in collaboration with the Raspberry Pi Foundation, which gives students and young people the amazing opportunity to conduct their own scientific experiments on the International Space Station. Teams of 2-6 young people, aged 19 and under, design and program…
Write Your Code Like NASA Does
Make Magazine recently published a video by Allyson Aberg highlighting 3 guidelines from JPL’s “Rules for Developing Safety Critical Code”. Worthwhile to watch the video for it contains more information than the written text. The guidelines can be found at: http://pixelscommander.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/P10.pdf Pixelscommander has applied these guidelines to JavaScript in this post. A more detailed document…
500 Weather Balloons Tracked to Date
Since July 2020, I’ve used Project Horus’s Radiosonde_auto_rx software running on a dedicated Raspberry Pi with a RTL-SDR to track weather balloons launched daily from the NOAA station in San Diego, CA, US and the US Army’s Yuma Proving Ground (Yuma, AZ, US). Tracks are posted in real-time to APRS.FI and HabHub. Radiosondes typically transmit…
XinaBox – Modular Components
One of the sponsors of the CTE Mission CubeSat challenge is XinaBox.cc. They developed a unique system of arduino based components, sensors and radios for the STEM/STEAM market. The components “snap” together forming a rigid stable platform for experimentation. Their system is much faster to assemble than traditional breadboarding or even 4-wire systems such as…
Fredric Raab 