#302 We build a 20 Dollars LoRa Satellite Ground Station and we follow the FossaSat-1 launch

these are ordinary satellite ground stations they cost millions and this is a ground station you can build for the newly launched Laura satellite it costs less than $20 let's make one in parallel to the launch of the spacecraft will it be successful create see youtubers here is the guy with a Swiss accent with a new episode and fresh ideas around sensors and microcontrollers remember if you subscribe you will always sit in the first row last Thursday I announced that the 16 year old Julian Fernandez and the small team built fossa sat.1 and it will be launched today Friday 6th December 2019 from New Zealand on board of an electron rocket this event took place this morning 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 and it is why I can start to build the ground station and produce this video in parallel we will have a look at the mission and how it goes for the moment we wait till the satellites are released by the rocket in parallel with a satellite doing its thing we can continue with a video where we will cover the forces at one program and its current status how we can track satellites in general and forces at in particular how we can build a ground station and connect it to the internet how we can create a satellite simulator to test our ground station and how sensors in the future can look like interesting times let's start Julian started the project with an idea and a reddit post then he found two team members and finally they placed a home-made Pico satellite in a nice-looking rocket that was launched this morning an astonishing story let's see what he has to say this is for someone a five centimeter sided cube that will be one of the smallest satellites ever launched into space it uses the polka cuneiform factor which senses from you size in use of commercial components can be launched into space for less than the cost of a car for someone's mission is to democratize access to space it carries a lower transceiver which will create the world's first global free and open-source Internet of Things telecommunications network the satellite here is a Laura repeater and a beacon on board as well as expandable solar panels and an expandable antenna it receives and transmits on four hundred and thirty six point seven megahertz this is not the is M band and you have to ask a fellow ham operator if you want to stay legal with your devices the idea of the project is that your sensors transmit messages to the satellite the satellite repeats the messages and so they arrive at the ground station on earth the whole system consists of sensors satellites ground stations and a message transfer backbone from the ground station to our application as we will later see one satellite can cover most of the earth surface but of course not all the time in the meantime rocket lab announced the release of the Pico satellites into space and we got the first tle data from Julian it is not completely clear where the satellite currently is this is why we got to t Ellie's forces at a and B we will later see what T L is our so let's continue with a video let's start with the most attractive part the satellite itself it is a low Earth orbit or Leo satellite because its altitude is around 300 to 500 kilometers this means it moves quite fast around the earth and always changes its position relative to ground so the natural question is where the hell is it and when can I reach it to answer these questions you need information about the track of the satellite and a lot of mathematics fortunately satellite tracks can be accurately forecasted and we can get programs for precisely that purpose and we also the standardized piece of information called two line element or short TL e which describes the track of a satellite these are the elements of a TL e I do not know how they get this information nor do I understand for example what the first derivative of mean motion aka the ballistic coefficient means so I am happy about all the helpful software and services after I got the initial TL is from Julian I downloaded a program called G predict this program can based on the gles calculate the current and future position of any satellite you find a link in the description to the download after the start of G predict you already see many satellites these are amateur radio satellites our faucet is not depicted we first have to get the latest yearly data from a service called cell s track a free service that tracks a lot of satellites to do that we go to edit and update tle data from network usually we get a bunch of new satellite data and after hitting close our database is up to date next we add a new model and name it fossa then we select the satellite or satellites we want to track and hit OK you should find the forces at 1:00 in the database and select it currently there is no official data and you find a link in the description to a file where you can upload the data because we still are at the beginning of the mission the satellite track is not completely clear this is why I got the tutee Elise I will track both of them till I get better information now I see the satellites on the world map we also see their footprint and a lot of other exciting information the most important info is the next passes why because my station will probably be the closest to the track during the first European crossing this evening this is why I print the data on a piece of paper for later reference the pass will start at 2110 local time and will last for about 10 minutes of course before you get this pass information you have to at your home as a ground station okay now we roughly know where the satellite is how big its footprint is and when it is reachable next time so we have to hurry up and build our own ground station fortunately this is simple because in the days before the start another team built a infrastructure based on the ground station code from a fossa systems they choose a typical or abort for their project because it has an ESP 32 on board and therefore uses the internet to connect to an MQTT server the mqtt server feeds a node-red installation where all ground stations are shown you should also see messages coming from the satellite and the satellite position on the same map impressive what they were able to do with node-red I have to admit you see a lot of active and passive stations are waiting for the satellite not enough they transfer the messages to the telegram messenger where for the moment you can see all messages in the future it is planned that you can connect to your MQTT topic and get your individual messages delivered to your application similar to TTN to build such a ground station is easy we download the sketch from github and if we use ATT go board everything should work ok if your display does not work please check which pins your board uses for the display and adjust em in pins on the score Arduino dot H here you see two pin out variants for TT Colora version two boards you find the file in this directory you get to this directory by clicking here in preferences and continue along the path mentioned before please do not about the extension v1 currently there is no v2 board definition available I just read in telegram that the beacon of the satellite was hurt in Australia the signal was quite weak compared with the signals transmitted by the two other satellites of the same transport so hopefully everything is okay now I really have to hurry up when you open the fossa on the score ground station enough I'll have a quick look at the libraries then you can imagine how much work went into this piece of software after uploading the ESP 32 starts up and creates a hotspot with a name for saccharin station if you connect to it you should get this screen if not go to 192 168 for one now you have to enter the Wi-Fi credentials your station name and the latitude and longitude this information is used to display your station on the map so maybe you want to use on precise numbers here then you have to enter the mqtt server you get your credentials if you fill out a form you find the link in the description today I can use generic credentials I got them by joining a telegram group my golden rule for new systems is if a system is not tested we have to assume it does not work everything else is just luck but how to test my ground station before the satellite arrives fortunately I also get a satellite simulate code I use this arduino 3.3 volt nano and an RF m95 module for the simulator please do not forget to solder an antenna to the antenna pin the simulator will transmit of course and later on we can reuse the same setup to build a sensor a few minutes ago the satellite passed California unfortunately the ground station near Tucson did not hear anything let's concentrate on the work only a few hours to go before the first pause when you watch this video please add test underscore in front of your station name then your messages will be separated otherwise your test messages will disturb the productive environment and you will not be a hero when you press save your ESP reboots connects to the MQTT server and waits for the satellite messages you can check if your ground station appears on the map and if it receives messages and then place your tt go outside your house where it sees the sky a standard antenna like that should be ok by the way do not forget to stop your simulator immediately after the tests of course it transmits on the same frequency as the satellite now I am ready and can continue with a production of this video because the two other satellites of the same transport flight transmit signals on 437 megahertz I prepare my to bow things with their respective frequencies like that and if I'm happy I can check if the whole bunch of satellites is above me what is left the sensor of course here we have a significant problem to solve we do not want to waste any energy Laura is a very efficient protocol and does not need a lot of energy so we do not wish to transmit or even receive if no satellite is overhead our sensor to achieve that the sensors have to be synchronized with the satellite for the moment I only have a first prototype sketch of an Arduino and an SX 1278 it waits till it gets data from the satellite to be sure it is visible and then it transmits the message of course it could also happen that two sensors transmit at the same time these are all things that have to be optimized over time I do not expect many sensors in the same area for the next future it is now a few hours later and after the first pass of the satellite close to my home I was not able to film outside because I had not enough hands and it was already dark the result is disillusioning I tried to contact the satellite during the whole path but did not get a response I heard one of the other satellites with my handheld so communication was possible also to force us at one most probably it is on low-power mode which should not be the case a station in Germany and many stations in Spain were also inside its footprint but also did not get any signals the next path overhead Europe will be tomorrow morning nothing to do till then Julian and his team can have a good sleep and tomorrow morning continue with the investigations of course we all hope that the satellite somehow will recover this is the story of the first day in the life of Phocis at one the first public loris satellite if you are interested you can follow the next steps by joining the telegram channel there you should get first-hand information if the satellite recovered if you do not want to build your own translation you can go to the data channel and see the messages coming from other stations as a coincidence today I got to 868 megahertz antennas which will be used in a next Laura space adventure lacunae is a commercial project using Laura technology on 868 megahertz and it will be compatible with Laura van one of the founders is Thomas who ported the Laura van library to the Arduino environment and so helped to start this whole movement I wish Julian and his team luck also because I'm curious to send my sensor data to space and get it back from there I hope this video was useful or at least interesting for you if true please consider supporting the channel to secure its future existence you find the links in the description thank you bye

Channel: Andreas Spiess

Views: 114,410

Rating: 4.9623981 out of 5

Keywords: arduino, arduino project, diy, do-it-yourself, eevblog, electronics, esp32, esp32 datasheet, esp32 project, esp32 tutorial, esp32 weather station, esp8266, greatscott, hack, how to, iot, lorawan, nodemcu, project, simple, smart home, ttgo, lora satellite, lora satellite communication, public satellite, fossa, julian fernandez, ttgo lora, 433mhz, 433mhz satellite, PocketQube, pocket cube, pocketcube satellite, nanosatellite, rocket lab, gpredict, tle, Satellite tutorial, satellite tracking

Id: 5k0aM-PJzo8

Length: 16min 0sec (960 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 08 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/fdsafdsafdsafdaasdf]

Not my video (obviously), I'm not in any way related to the project - just saw it and thought it was super cool. Looking forward to some more successful communication with the satellite. I live rurally, so if this remains low cost then it may actually end up being useful for connectivity at home.

Anyone connect tiny boards to things in space?

[u/DaQue60]

I wonder if a big external antenna would help crossed dipole over a screens maybe?

[u/JD_Exonets]

https://fossa.systems/fossasat-1/