We’ve made about 250 contacts with our Portable Satellite Station 2.0 and we have worked 106 grids which should be enough to earn a Satellite VUCC. We are working on a set of upgrades to create our Portable Satellite Station 3.0 which will support ISS Crew Contacts and be a 90th percentile satellite ground station. You can read more about our 3.0 upgrade plans via the link below.
I recently wrote a blog article about the DX Alarm Clock software – here is Part 2 of the Series on the how I built the hardware for the DX Alarm Clock.
DX Alarm Clock Hardware Components
The DX Alarm Clock is based on a Raspberry Pi 3 computer and an Adafruit Pi-TFT Touch Screen Display. The list of components, along with links is below. Since I built the Raspberry Pi almost a year ago and technology is always advancing, some of the parts are no longer available or have better replacements available. I’ll provide information on what I used and a recommended replacement. Approximate prices are included.
Raspberry Pi 3
Motherboard: Raspberry Pi 3 ($35) – includes a 1.2 GHz 64-bit quad-core ARM CPU, Build in WiFi, Ethernet, 4 USB Ports, an HDMI port and audio port (3.5″) and Bluetooth.
Portable Speaker: Any small portable/rechargeable speaker will do. Mine is a Kinivo, but it is no longer available. Any small speaker will do as long as it is Bluetooth or has a 3.5″ stereo connector.
Completed DX Alarm Clock Hardware
The picture above shows the completed DX Alarm Clock Hardware running portable using a USB battery pack.
Raspberry Pi Development Environment
Raspberry Pi Development Environment
After constructing the Raspberry Pi, case and TFT Display, the next step was to connect it to a monitor via the HDMI port, a mouse via one of the USB ports and to a Bluetooth keyboard. Then I loaded the Raspbian Operating System onto the Raspberry Pi via the micro SD card. I first copied the OS to the Micro SD card using a PC or Mac and then inserted the card into the Raspberry Pi and booted from it. You can find a good tutorial on how to do this at https://www.raspberrypi.org/learning/software-guide/quickstart/
Once Raspbian is installed, you will have a windows like GUI (Graphical User Interface) environment with a web browser, and a number of additional applications included.
This gave me a development environment that I could use to build and test the DX Alarm Clock software. I used the Python language to develop the software. I used the Python IDLE development environment, which is included in the Raspbian OS.
I’ve been pretty active on the 6m band the past few years. The addition of the MSK144 mode for Meteor Scatter contacts has been a lot of fun and has added some new grid squares to my total.
6m Grids Worked Using MSK144 Meteor Scatter During the 2017 Orionids
I wanted to share a new post from our Stationproject Blog about our experiences with making 6m contacts using Meteor Scatter propagation and the MSK144 mode. You can read the article and see a video of a Meteor Scatter contact via the link below.
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