Outernet cubesat news

Seasalt · 2015-11-21T06:36:09.559Z

APRS sounds really interesting and I have started researching how I could use satellite APRS on my sailing boat when I go on trips.

I would appreciate any advice as to what design of antenna do I need?

George

tjanos · 2015-11-21T07:36:38.662Z

Hi Seasalt,
it seems, it is the time to talk a little about the possible receive of the outernet cubesats.
From the Clyde-Space brossure, linked by Syed, it is clear, there will be 2 type of trasmit, one for telemetry, on 144 MHz in aprs. The aprs frequency in Europe, and some other country is 144.800 MHz, in US it is a little different. And it will be broadcast the outernet contents on, somewhere 440 MHz GMSK modulation.
It means you (and we) will need two type of antenna try to receive the signals.
Practically, for the best result, need a high sensitive directional antenna-group, with rotating equipments, and control to track the satellites. This setup is impossible on a sail-boat.
My personal comment:
One years ago, we had a cubesat, Masat-1, it carried transmitter on board, transmit on 435 MHz the telemetry in 1200 bps (not in aprs) and image data on 9600 GMSK. We had a dedicated receiver dongle for it:
masatusbrx
and a decoder program in java, running on the users PC.
Majority of the radio amateurs use they controlled antennas to receive. But I made some experiments with a very simple setup, used a 430 MHz collinear antenna to receive the telemetry. It has some success, mostly the orbits in night-time was able to recive, and the orbits, around 30-70 degree elevations.
There are in commercially available such collinear antenna in the 2 bands, 144 and 440 MHz, I think it can hope will be usefull for simple test setup.
Maybe usefull receive on a boat too.
t.janos

Seasalt · 2015-12-05T13:20:57.587Z

Thank you for the first rate reply.
I am not on the boat all the time so maybe I could set up one of these antennas in the place I rent,

Could you please send a link to these antenna designs etc.

George

tjanos · 2015-12-05T15:15:28.643Z

I bought the dual-band antenna in a local shop, but it produced by international company.

dnd.hu

Diamond Base Station Multiband Antenna

Seasalt · 2015-12-07T06:54:30.859Z

i want to hear and know more about sending data up to a satellite on a standard antenna and also what are the options for more adventurous antenna designs.

I think I might start building a simple antenna and trying to possibly use my rtl sdr et400 ubs dongle that I currently use to decode the aircraft positions etc as a cheap receiver. Are their any sdr programs

I think the Lantern with its 10mb a day would be a very exciting purchase to add.

Could any one please jump in with their ideas and plans.

George

tjanos · 2015-12-07T08:09:10.670Z

George,
The commercially available, relative simple antenna design I used only to receive telemetry from our cubesat, Masat-1 without any tracking system, and with “modest” success.
But send command to such a small satellite is another story. On this web page you can see the webcam pictures of our new antenna system, prepared for the controll of our new small pocketcube, Smog-1:
http://gnd.bme.hu/kamerak.php

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t.janos

bmcintosh · 2015-12-07T14:14:14.095Z

tjanos:

I don’t want to hijack this thread, but I spent many years in the design, deployment and testing of ground based satellite carrier monitoring. Basically, we would sample all of the RF channels coming from a fixed orbit satellite, compare power and frequency of the signal against the list of signals we expect, and alarm when someone is transmitting too high, or if a critical signal disappears.

Send me a private message if you would like to talk more.

Cheers,
Brian McIntosh

kalashnikov · 2015-12-07T14:22:51.479Z

I suppose you know this proyect https://satnogs.org/ …

bmcintosh · 2015-12-07T14:41:41.607Z

Just had a quick peek - this looks very cool. I may need to set one up!

Seasalt · 2015-12-08T13:43:12.866Z

http://www.uhf-satcom.com/lband/

Could / would the above antenna work on a boat at sea with either a Outernet lighthouse getting high speed data (1 GB a day) or connected to a Outernet Lantern getting the 10MB a day satellite data feed.

It looks very easy to build and may work the RTL SDR Dongle I have.

The antenna on the new Outernet Lantern device looks very small and we have been discussing whether it will only function in a stationary position or whether it could be on the roof of a vehicle and still get 10 MB of Data per day from space.

George

branko · 2015-12-08T14:39:45.117Z

Seasalt:

The antenna on the new Outernet Lantern device looks very small and we have been discussing whether it will only function in a stationary position or whether it could be on the roof of a vehicle and still get 10 MB of Data per day from space.

New Lantern is still a stationary device. I’m curious if you actually got L-band reception using RTL SDR, though. How did that go, or are you just planning to do it?

Seasalt · 2015-12-08T15:11:44.129Z

Thanks for the reply Branko I am more just thinking out loud about ideas. I do not want to be the first person to go through the hassle of experimenting on what satellite equipment does work, and what doesn’t work on a tilting sailing boat under way.

But I will be very excited to play with a Lantern and experiment. If it only works in calm situations at anchor that would be fine as well, especially in terms of a $165 device.

I would also like to put a simple antenna up that would allow me to send small APRS data packets etc. up to amateur satellite repeaters as a very basic form of up-link email and possibly have people reply to me using the Outernet $3 per month “twitter” messaging service. Which I imagine is sent almost immediately as priority packets over the Lantern and Lighthouse feed. This would give me a kind of internet chat to the outside world that would be kind of connected to the internet in a kind of real time, depending on how many free to-use satellites go up in the future. ( My feeling is that lots of Cube sats are going to go up.)

Out of interest could you please post the Outernet down-link frequencies or range of frequencies that you expect to use for the Lantern 10 MB per day service.

For the Cubesats what frequencies / Bands do you intend to broadcast on?

What kind of Payload options is Outernet taking on the Cubesats. How much power is available to your payload transmitters.

Are you going to allow APRS repeater function on the Cubesats?

Will the Lantern allow the connection of non dish type antennas i.e flat phased array antennas etc for mobile operation?

I have only used my rtlsdr usb stick to pick up the aircraft ADS-B signals flying over where I live, using a circular DIY half dipole coaxial antenna which allows me to see planes landing 30 km away.

But I see on the internet there are many RTL SDR using them for UHF satellite reception. My feeling was it might allow me to decode some low 1000 ish L-Band . But I am not in a rush, Until you start the 10mb a day Lantern download I am sort of doing other projects first.

George

Syed · 2015-12-08T18:34:29.004Z

Seasalt:

But I will be very excited to play with a Lantern and experiment. If it only works in calm situations at anchor that would be fine as well, especially in terms of a $165 device.

Sadly, the new Lantern will no longer cost $165. Our backers will be getting an OUTSTANDING discount for a really unique satellite terminal. We expect the price of the future version of Lantern to drop to that price, but that is a couple years away. Satcomm is expensive

Seasalt:

Out of interest could you please post the Outernet down-link frequencies or range of frequencies that you expect to use for the Lantern 10 MB per day service.

We will be delivering content between 1525 MHz and 1559 MHz. A simple patch antenna, with gain of about 8 dBi should suffice, but you’ll need a specialized (but still free) software demodulator to turn the signal into actual content.

The cubesats will be transmitting around 403 MHz.

The cubesats will have about 8W of power available. It’s a 1U satellite, so the only payload is the UHF radio.

Since we want to deliver more than just 10MB of content, we had to switch to a proprietary design, so the connector will not be exposed. But for a software-based receiver, you can add any kind of antenna to, similar to how you work with an RTL dongle.

The RTL can pick up L-band, but it get really hot and unstable above 1 GHz. You should be fine for the receiving the cubesats, though.

kenbarbi · 2015-12-09T00:50:44.366Z

Sadly too, Lighthouse with Version 2.0.000 software is receiving data from Galaxy 19, but not displaying it in the Librarian either. Details sent to Branko by e mail. Ken

pradeeka · 2015-12-09T05:16:49.932Z

kenbarbi:

Lighthouse with Version 2.0.000 software is receiving data from Galaxy 19, but not displaying it in the Librarian either

I have a Lighthouse flashed with V2.0.000, pointed to ABS-2 74.9E and it is receiving data and displaying in the Librarian.

Seasalt · 2015-12-09T11:07:54.780Z

If i buy a lighthouse now will I be able to connect a smaller antenna or different antenna in the near future and pick up the 10mb a day feed that the Outernet Lantern will be receiving?

If so I will not wait for a Lantern but buy a Lighthouse today and start playing with a large C Band antenna and when the Mobile Lantern service starts I will change over to a smaller mobile antenna and pick up the 10 MB feed as I go to different places.

George

branko · 2015-12-09T12:12:24.456Z

Seasalt:

If i buy a lighthouse now will I be able to connect a smaller antenna or different antenna in the near future and pick up the 10mb a day feed that the Outernet Lantern will be receiving?

No, Lighthouse only has standard DVB-S/S2 tuners.

Seasalt · 2015-12-10T06:29:04.681Z

Branko I think we need some kind of Capability Matrix to simplify this.

Here is my very rough understanding. Please Jump in and advise accordingly.

The Lighthouse can Only pick up KU and C Band but not L Band , VHF and not the UHF of the Cubesats.

The Outernet Lantern can receive KU, C, L-Band and UHF (Cubesat) but not VHF?

George

branko · 2015-12-10T10:54:24.742Z

I’m definitely not an expert on radio so @syed will fill you in on the details. I think the new Lantern will only be L-band (but, as I said, I’m not dealing with that part of the product so I’m not sure).

Syed · 2015-12-12T06:33:17.355Z

Yes, we do need a matrix. I need to update this page:

https://wiki.outernet.is/wiki/Outernet_Receivers

You assumed correctly that Lighthouse receives Ku and C band, through an LNB. Without getting too technical, Lighthouse actually demodulates at L-band, because that is what an LNB downconverts to. But I’ve probably only confused you with that additional piece of information, so to clarify, Lighthouse receives DVB-S2.

Lantern’s design has shifted a bit, but has now stabilized to L-band. Specifically, 1525 MHz - 1559 MHz. The satellites in use are from LightSquared and Thuraya (Thuraya-2 and Thuraya-3).

The cubesats will be transmitting over UHF, specifically 401 MHz. The receiver for those signals will be an RTL-dongle, which can be obtained for about $10.