[Ground-station] Open Source CubeSat Workshop notes from Hugh

[Hugh Brown]

KENT BRITAIN wrote:
> Hi Hugh
> I have several antennas in orbit and working on several more.
> And did the articles on the 'Cheap Yagi's' for ground stations.
> What kinds of antennas are your seeing a future need for?

Hi Kent -- my understanding is that for 5/10GHz, the antennas may need
to be substantially different from what is common in SatNOGS stations
right now (which are aimed at the 2m and 70cm bands).  (I seem to
recall something on the mailing list or Slack about repurposing
Primestar dishes...but I might be imagining that.)  If you're asking
about whether I think it should be a
Yagi/Lindenblad/parabolic/something else, the answer is I don't know
-- I'm very much learning all this as I go along.

More generally -- one challenge that SatNOGS has had is getting people
who *aren't* already into radio up to speed on what's needed to set up a
ground station.  By way of example, I came in through the space/Linux
nerdery path, rather than having already been interested in radio.
(In fact, I only got my license this year as a result of my
involvement with SatNOGS.)  For me, at least, the radio side has been
a steep learning curve.  (Not that I'm complaining...I love being at
the bottom of a steep learning curve.)

Someone already interested in VHF/UHF radio in general, or working
amateur satellites in particular, would probably either a) make a
quick vertical and be done with it, b) buy/make a Yagi or log-periodic
(Arrow/Elk, for commercial options) + a rotator, or c) have informed
opinions about turnstile vs Lindenblad and so on.  I've had to learn
all that; if there had been a default "just buy/build one of these"
default option, I would have done that to get myself started.  I'm
guessing I'm not the only one who could use a suggestion like that,
particularly when we start having Phase 4 radios in orbit.

That's the side for folks who don't run their own cubesat.  For those
who do (university departments, open source projects, etc), it might be
good to have an all-in-one solution on tap: need a radio with lots of
bandwidth? need a ground station to collect telemetry? need a
world-wide network of ground stations that will help with that?  Here
are the designs/parts for the radio that goes into orbit, here's the
radio and antenna design/parts for your own ground station, and here's
what you can publish so that other SatNOGS stations can collect your
data.  

I hope that makes sense...I'm definitely curious to know how well
these rambling thoughts map to reality. :-)

Thanks,
Hugh



> 73 Kent WA5VJB
> 
>       From: Hugh Brown <aardvark at saintaardvarkthecarpeted.com>
>  To: KENT BRITAIN <wa5vjb at flash.net> 
> Cc: Michelle Thompson <mountain.michelle at gmail.com>; Michelle Thompson via Ground-Station <ground-station at lists.openresearch.institute>
>  Sent: Monday, October 1, 2018 10:16 PM
>  Subject: Re: [Ground-station] Open Source CubeSat Workshop notes from Hugh
>    
> KENT BRITAIN via Ground-Station wrote:
> > Interesting Report
> > Can Hugh be more specific about what kind of antennas he has in mind?
> > I didn't see a way of contacting him directly.
> 
> Hi Kent -- I'm on the list (and neglected to add my email address to
> the notes).
> 
> I think they bit you're referring to is:
> 
> > - As designs for antenna progress, it will be worth talking to SatNOGS
> >  folks about designs/instructions for easy-to-build Phase 4 antenna
> >  that can be put into SatNOGS ground stations
> >  - One interesting possibility might be to market Phase4 radio
> >    designs (or better yet, cubesat parts as Bruce has suggested) +
> >    SatNOGS ground station as a standard open source ground station
> >    for satellite telemetry:
> >    - visualization via SatNOGS DB
> >    - telemetry/instrument data via DVB
> >    - perhaps with built-in amateur radio functionality (whatever the
> >      next generation of current AMSAT FM repeaters might look like)
> >      in order to get amateur radio community interested as well
> >      (though this may need to be balanced against worries of amateur
> >      radio folks appearing as scribes/assistants)
> >    - Note: C&C not part of SatNOGS; they've got some stubs for the
> >      functionality, but I'm not sure if this is a priority for them
> 
> Looking back, I realize I wasn't terribly clear here.  What I had in
> mind was that as design/build of the Phase 4 receiver (and antenna)
> progresses, it might be worth looking for ways to make it easy to
> integrate it into the SatNOGS project.  I was thinking about the
> discussions I seem to recall about both receiver and antenna design on
> the mailing list and on Slack -- thus, not a particular antenna but
> whatever the final (or final-ish) design converges on.
> 
> Since SatNOGS (I think) needs mainly a GNU Radio-compatible SDR, and
> is antenna-agnostic, I don't think this should present much of a
> problem; my idea was more about presenting SatNOGS + Phase4 as an
> "all-in-one" solution for cubesat ground stations run by the
> operators, as well as for stations run by interested third parties
> (the way SatNOGS can be used by non-operators today to collect
> telemetry).
> 
> As I'm still learning about Phase 4 (and amateur radio in general for
> that matter), it's entirely possible I've misunderstood some of this,
> underestimated difficulties, etc...any confusion is likely to be
> mine. :-)
> 
> I hope that helps, but let me know if you have any questions.
> 
> Thanks,
> Hugh
> 

-- 
Hugh Brown
http://saintaardvarkthecarpeted.com