Messing About With NodeRed

 I'm still messing about with my ideas for QO-100 and I'm now thinking that I'm going to make a remote box of tricks that will be connected by ethernet to the house.

The main SDR will be the Adalm-Pluto which will give me the full duplex I need for TX on 2.4GHz and RX on 700 ish MHz.

Inside the box I would like to be able to monitor the health of the various power rails I'm going to need plus I would like to be able to switch a few things on and off.

I've started to look at NodeRed - a most excellent piece of software that can allow me to create a dashboard to do just about all the things I want. This can run on a Raspberry Pi in the remote box of tricks and get controlled by a dashboard from a web browser on the network elsewhere.

So far I have installed the software on a Pi5, tried a HID relay unit, which needed this jiggery pokery completed before it would work:

Linux Dependancies

For linux you will need to make sure you install some additional libraries. For debian and raspbian this should be done with the following: sudo apt-get install libudev-dev librtlsdr-dev libusb-1.0-0-dev libpthread-stubs0-dev git

You will also need to add udev rules. Create the following file /etc/udev/rules.d/50-hidrelay.rules. This allows node-red the permissions to commuincate with the device directly.

SUBSYSTEM=="input", GROUP="input", MODE="0666"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="16c0", ATTRS{idProduct}=="05df", MODE:="666", GROUP="plugdev"
KERNEL=="hidraw*", ATTRS{idVendor}=="16c0", ATTRS{idProduct}=="05df", MODE="0666", GROUP="plugdev"

I now have a simple flow graph in Node Red:

Which creates a simple dashboard with some buttons:

and these buttons, do indeed switch the relays on and off.

I've ordered some INA219 boards, these are voltage and current monitors that will interface to the Pi using I2C. There is a module for these in Node Red so should be able to create voltage monitoring OK with these devices.

More to follow!

Eshail-2 thats QO-100

 Well,

Soon after the launch of the QO-100 satellite I managed to bodge together a station - which has long since been discarded.

I've decied to have another go and see what activity is on this geostationary bird.

I've chucked a few bits together to get a narowband RX going, it looks a bit like this - there's a 1 meter ofset dish attached to the back of one of my wifes trellises for roses in the garden:

I tried to use a SatFinder app on my Android phone for alignment, but it seemed to be unsure where south was, which didnt exactly inspire me. I had my best guess at it and then tweeked the allignment for max signal. The only thing that really had me fooled for a while was the angle of tilt - the satellite is at 24.4 degrees from my QTH, but I had no real idea what the ofset angle of the dish was. As it happens the dish itself is practically vertical so its actual ofset must be close to the target I need.

Here's a photo of the dish:

And these are some screenshots from SDR Console:

It has a really neat tracking feature so you can automatically adjust for LNB drift:

You just clock on the PSK beacon and it just does its thing.

I have no idea how well this is aligned as I dont know how strong the beacon should be. Anyone know?

The first QSO I listened to was from the NRC using GB3RS who were letting some scouts use the micrtophone to pass comments to a station in ON land. Most excellent!

Digital TV - really? QO-100 again!

Well,

Over the weekend I have been playing with the software KG-STV.

This is a kind of digital TV; its slow scan TV that's digitised on TX.

It took me a while to get the software to key the radio - eventually I figured out it doesnt seem to work if the selected COM port is > 9. Hey ho, as my PC Is COM port city, I had to shuffle some stuff about.

Here's two instances of the software running at the same time; the top one is my TX signal going up on 13cm and the bottom is my RX of the signal on 3cm.

And here is the same image as received by CT1BYM, Miguel:

and here some more images Migual has been kind enough to share. This is his RX setup:

How cool is that?