Hi William,

Check out the LVB tracker by Howard G6LVB. You can "upgrade" the standard version to be a stand-alone tracker unit. It uses a PIC 18F2620 microcontroller.

73, Andre PH7AT

William Leijenaar wrote:

Hi AMSATs,

For some longer time I have been looking for a way to get a stand-alone real-time satellite tracking system, without the use of a dual-core, GHz speed power consuming computer :o) To my suprise I didn't found much, only one design called trakbox which can be found E.g at the following tapr website: http://www.tapr.org/kits_trakbox.html

Unfortunatly it is not available anymore, and the mean reason I guess is the outdated components. I found out that the design originates from JAMSAT. Maybe someone has data (schematic, PCB layout, source code) of this design ?

I wonder with todays highly integrated microcontrollers if there is some modern kind of real-time-tracker available ? I am looking for a system that works just seconds after switching on the power supply and not something that first has to boat 15min and needs a mouse to work.

73, PE1RAH William Leijenaar www.leijenaarelectronics.nl

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On Sun, Nov 29, 2009 at 6:23 PM, w4upd [email protected] wrote:

GO to the following FTP location at my site. I think you'll find what you need there. If not let me know and I'll look to see if I have other info related to the Trakbox.

ftp://bristor-assoc.com/pub/Amateur/TrakBox/

Reid, W4UPD

William Leijenaar wrote:

...

Hi AMSATs,

For some longer time I have been looking for a way to get a stand-alone real-time satellite tracking system, without the use of a dual-core, GHz speed power consuming computer :o) To my suprise I didn't found much, only one design called trakbox which can be found E.g at the following tapr website: http://www.tapr.org/kits_trakbox.html

Unfortunatly it is not available anymore, and the mean reason I guess is the outdated components. I found out that the design originates from JAMSAT. Maybe someone has data (schematic, PCB layout, source code) of this design ?

I wonder with todays highly integrated microcontrollers if there is some modern kind of real-time-tracker available ? I am looking for a system that works just seconds after switching on the power supply and not something that first has to boat 15min and needs a mouse to work.

William --

It depends what you mean by tracker, since the word is a bit widely used in English. It could mean 1) a device that, in response to az/el values submitted on a serial line, controls antenna rotors to track a satellite, or 2) a device that calculates those az/el values (as well as downlink and uplink frequencies, e.g.), or 3) something that does both of these tasks.

There are many commercial and one-off instances of #1. Trackbox above is an instance of #3, though I don't believe it is still being kitted. The LVBtracker is best known as an instance of #1 above, but in fact the latest version is an example of #3 above. It is available from AMSAT-UK as a kit, and from AMSAT-NA as a completed product.

If you'd like to explore an extremely low-power and small footprint device that will do #2 above, you might want to consider the qrpTracker libraries and applications I've written and ported for the Arduino platform, available at http://code.google.com/p/qrptracker/ with a website at http://sites.google.com/site/qrptracker/ I think hobbiests might find this easy to work with because the various building blocks -- like Plan 13 tracking code, TLE-storage and -access routines and rig-control activies -- have been packaged into C++ classes. Moreover, the Arduino hardware is ubiquitous, standard and relatively cheap.

My youtube video demoing how this code and hardware could be used onboard a satellite to save power made the rounds a couple of weeks ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSUK7Jq3LCY

In a day or so I hope to post a video of the same device doppler-tuning my FT-817. The long-term terrestrial goal is to provide a satellite-selecting and doppler tuning 'dongle' for this and the TH-D7A.

73, Bruce http://ve9qrp.blogspot.com