Yay Space

I love rockets... this topic needed a post :grinning:

Darn..I got excited when I saw this forum.
Totally empty :slight_smile:

I guess I am the only one in the UK who got to see Venus, the Moon and Jupiter all next to each other in the sky this morning?

Echo....echo....echo.... :slight_smile:

I saw that too!!! Nice crescent moon.

wolframore:
I saw that too!!! Nice crescent moon.

Yes it was nice, I ventured out in -5C (wearing PJ's) to take a photo of it over the road, the neighbours must have thought I was mad :slight_smile:

It was -30 C this morning in Chicago... some freak Polar Vortex thing for couple days... made the sky nice and clear!

wolframore:
It was -30 C this morning in Chicago... some freak Polar Vortex thing for couple days... made the sky nice and clear!

I just saw that on our news, holy crap that must have been something!

877:
Yes it was nice, I ventured out in -5C (wearing PJ's) to take a photo of it over the road, the neighbours must have thought I was mad :slight_smile:

Can you post that pic? I couldn't see anything where I'm from.

bos1714:
Can you post that pic? I couldn't see anything where I'm from.

Sure no probs, not the best photos in the world :slight_smile:

Venus on the left, Jupiter on the right.

LINK

Hi,
I think the problem is that there is no way to advertise to other forum members that there is a new theme.

Its almost worthwhile having a splash screen when you log in to inform members of forum changes.

Tom.. :slight_smile:

It’s too cold for space in Chicago. Come March or April I will start going out to the Tripoli Amateur rocket launches. Maybe it’s a good time to start a project for it.

One thing I would love to experiment with is a LoRa based PocketQube (50mm x 50mm), I have a design that ought to work even and most of the code is done.

LoRa ought to have enough range that you would be able to receive messages from orbit with simple handheld receivers based on Arduino Pro Minis.

I can pay for the build cost, around £150, all I need is for someone to sponsor the launch, a bargain mere £25,000.

Any offers ?

Nice. I’m not sure if LoRa will reach 330,000 ft for edge of space. I’m working on my FCC Amateur radio license for some short wave highpower transceivers. I’m only looking for 50,000 feet tops.

wolframore:
I’m not sure if LoRa will reach 330,000 ft for edge of space.

No problem with that, LoRa would be good for two way comms at well over 1000km.

One of the issues with small and low cost satellites is that the International Amateur Radio Union, who allocate the frequencies, are really keen that you have two way comminications so that you can turn of the transmissions if requested.

I'm curious - would LoRa cope with the Doppler shift of orbital velocities?

A few years back, I listened to a ham conversation between Tim Peake on the ISS and a school in the UK, whilst watching the signal on a waterfall display - the slant was quite noticeable!

I've always wanted to get involved in space stuff, I wish I was clever enough to work for NASA or similar.

As I am in my early 40's, with kids, good job, commitments and live in the UK, it seems that probably won't happen.

But, I do have plenty of free time. So I always wondered how I could contribute towards something huge, like getting humans to Mars...

AWOL:
I'm curious - would LoRa cope with the Doppler shift of orbital velocities?

Interesting you should mention that.

Back in 2014, LoRa was very new, there were no libraires and it was a case of reading the data sheet to work out what was going on.

I had started looking at LoRa, following the $50SAT project, because it showed great potential for simple very long distance comminications and thus very promising for very small satellites. The RFM22B used in $50SAT had been made to work for two way digital comms, but it needed some decent antennas and expensive low noise amplifiers to make it work.

I noticed during my endevours that at low LoRa data rates, 100bps or so, I was getting packet CRC errors where the rate of errors went up the longer the packets were and the more power was used to transmit them. I theorised that this was due to thermal heating of the RF chip causing drift in the reference oscillator.

LoRa receivers have a capture range in that the receivers frequency has to be within 25% of the transmitters for packet reception to start. At a bandwith of 61.5kHz, the capture range would be +/- 15kHz or so, within the range of the normal satellite doppler shift of +/-10kHz.

However it appeared that once a packet reception had started the amount of frequncy drift of receiver or transmitter was very small at around 1.5% of the bandwidth. There was no mention of this issue in the datasheet at the time, but it has since been added by Semtech. There is a low data rate optimisation flag that can be set which virtually eliminates the problem.

Potentially there could then be a problem with the rapid rate of change of doppler, 100s/hz a second, that occurs as a satellite moves overhead. However when a satellite is very distant, 1000km+, the doppler is fairly static at +/- 10kHz so it seemed likely that LoRa would only have a problem close in on overhead passes.

I mentioned all this in a report in early 2015, pointing out that LoRa could have a issue with satellite doppler.

Many years later LoRa was actually tested from space by borrowing some time on a 169Mhz maratime satellite that had a decent SDR on it that could generate LoRa. This was the 'LoRa from Space' experiment during the Things Network conference 2018 and it was a success.

The LoRa was transmitted on 169Mhz at 26dBm (400mW) into an approximate 6dB gain steerable yagi which was pointed to the horizon and at Amsterdam during the pass, data rate was 292bps. The LoRa was received on the ground with a simple omni as soon as the satellite cleared the horizon, a range of 2763km.

I was there at the conference and despite only having a 434Mhz LoRa receiver with rubber duck antenna, I was able to receive the 'LoRa from Space'

The experiment is documented here;

LoRa From Space

I get a mention at 25:40

The current LoRa distance record, ground to high altitude balloon is 702km. That was at 868Mhz, 14dBm, 300bps, simple omni antennas. So moving down to the 437Mhz amateur satellite band would reduce free space losses by 5dBm and you could increase power by 6dBm to 20dBm, this is an increase in link budget of 11dBm or equvalent to a range of 2,490km, should be plenty.

Hello all :smiley:

this is my first post ever on arduino.

i heard about the satellite week rollover on April 6th 2019. anyone know if sim808 modules will be affected by this?

thanks!

Fivevolts:
Hello all :smiley:

this is my first post ever on arduino.

i heard about the satellite week rollover on April 6th 2019. anyone know if sim808 modules will be affected by this?

thanks!

Its a GPS issue, there is a forum for GPS stuff, better to ask in there, not many people use GPSs in space.

Networking, Protocols, and Devices - I2C, SPI, XBee, GPS, etc.

i see, sorry about that , thanks :slight_smile: ill ask in the other forum

I've started building a 7m tall rocket that runs on nitros oxide and solid rocket fuel. Im hoping for 85000 feet, ever hopeful.
Two years ago i bought a cnc lathe ,cnc mill and some 3d printers,i didn't have a clue how to use them.
Thanks to open source help and a chance meeting im good enough to start building.
Now ive started learning about arduino, which im very excited about.
I can edit clever peoples code and now can fill my rocket with gas from 25m away, which after the last test
is a good thing.
Im trying to build a load cell to measure thrust and time and down load it to a sd card or direct onto excell
this is for test firing so i can decide whether angles or holes should change.
Also i have to trigger two chutes and was optimistic when i was able to program a pressure sencer to down load data to a sd card.I never expected them to be that accurate, recording a 2m variation.
However it turned out they only work up to 35000ft.

Mission:
To photograph/video the curvature of the earth
Record temp ,radiation,height, G force etc
Anything interesting that will fit and i haven't thought of.

Happy to make it a open source project.