This episode of HamTalk Live is brought to you
by Tower Electronics. For connectors, cables,
and more, call 920 -435 -2973 or visit pl -259
.com and by the HamStation. Get your new radio
or antenna by calling 800 -729 -4373 or go to
hamstation .com. Good evening, everyone. This
is HamTalk Live episode number 10. Dayton Hamvention
preview satin odds recorded on Tuesday, April
26, 2016. I'm your host, Neil Rapp, WB9VPG. Thanks
for tuning into this episode of HamTalk Live.
Tonight on the show, Corey Shields, KB9JHU will
be on the show to talk about the upcoming Tapper
Forum at the Dayton Hamvention and his presentation
there. on SatNogs. Last week on the show, Don
Wilbanks, AE5DW, was back to talk about amateur
radio newslines Bill Pasternak -Youngham of the
Year Award. Last year's winner, Anna Veale, WZeroANT,
called in, and Andy Morrison, K9AWM, played our
live contest and almost walked away with a brand
new ICOM IC7300. So if you missed that show or
any future show, you can listen to the replay.
That's on HamTalkLive .com or on Spreaker, iTunes,
Stitcher, SoundCloud, Google Play, TuneIn or
YouTube. Tonight is the start of our Dayton Hamvention
preview and due to some unfortunate circumstances
our original guest had to reschedule so tonight
Corey Shields KB9GHU is here to talk about his
SatNogs presentation which will take place at
the Tapper Forum on Friday morning of Hamvention.
In the weeks to come, we'll be joined by the
instructors and youth forums moderator, Carol
Perry, WB2MGP, then the general chairman and
the official spokesperson for Hamvention, and
last but not least, the director of the Dayton
Contest University, Tim Duffy, K3LR. And the
night before Hamvention, we'll be broadcasting
live from Dayton. So if you're in Dayton on Thursday,
May 19th, the night before Hamvention, stop by
the lobby of Spring Hill Suites in Miamisburg.
That's near the Dayton Mall at 417 North Springboro
Pike. We'll be interviewing the audience live
on the show, giving away prizes, and taking calls
from people talking about their favorite part
of Hamvention. If you're on the road to Dayton,
we would love for you to call in and tell us
your favorite part of Hamvention Weekend. or
if you can't make it to Dayton this year, give
us a call and tell us your favorite Hamvention
story. Keep listening and watch our Facebook
and Twitter feed for all the details. Also, we
are just about ready to release the details on
our HamTalk Live shirts for sale. Watch our Facebook
page or Twitter feed for details and there's
a sneak peek of the design up there right now.
If you missed the show live last week, you are
not alone. The show is being recorded tonight
simply as a podcast on Tuesday. We'll be back
to taking your calls live on Thursday night when
Carol Perry WB2MGP joins us. The reason that
this show was not live on Thursday night is that
my mother Margie Rapp WD9HE became a silent key
earlier that morning. So I was tending to my
dad Dell WB9 UKG and mom's funeral arrangements.
I appreciate everyone that sent condolences and
hopefully I won't have to miss another show for
a long time. I feel like I should take just a
moment to talk about mom. She was always supportive
of what I did, especially ham radio. While my
dad and I both took a ham radio class and became
licensed in 1976, My mom couldn't stand not knowing
what we were saying in Morse code, so the following
year mom signed up for the class and got her
novice license and we upgraded together as a
family, fighting through the struggles of faster
code speeds and more complicated theory questions
at the same time. Soon mom was on the radio talking
to the world and not just eavesdropping on dad
and I. She loved the YL International Sideband
System on 40 meters and used it to get her work
to all states. Many nights she would be on the
local repeater with another YL friend, WB9RXG,
talking about recipes while all the guys were
sitting back listening and wondering why they
would waste such precious repeater time talking
about cooking when they could be talking about
things they talk about, gardens, ailments, and
the weather. Finally, they picked a simplex frequency
and got off the repeater, but secretly people
were turning the dial to listen. Mom always had
a friendly voice to those passing through or
needing help. Mom even helped track down a bootlegger.
ABCDEF was his call. He said it was a new 6x0
call sign. His supposed friend in the car, which
mysteriously sounded like the same guy, throwing
his voice, said he tried to get AAAAAA, but it
was already taken. So he was BBBBBB. Well, Mom
kept talking to him as some of the club members
were driving around doing some direction finding
and trying to triangulate the signal. Then there
was Ken Conduff, WB9ZHL, who came the way to
Vincent's just to meet us all and Their whole
family became lifelong friends and when we traveled
to take our upgrade Test in Louisville She told
Ken where we were along the way as we were driving
on two meters only just discover that He had
arranged a surprise State Police escort to take
us the rest of the way to our hotel You can imagine
our look When they pulled us over and said are
you guys the ones? that we're supposed to take
in. And one night in the early 80s, Chuck at
9 ESO, who I would later reunite with when I
moved here to Bloomington in the Bloomington
Amateur Radio Club, was traveling from Bloomington
to Vincennes to host a meeting with management
people in southwest Indiana and he was chatting
with a friend, Woody Parks. As he got further
away from Bloomington and the Bloomington repeater,
He moved to the Vincennes repeater, and Woody
suggested that he give a shout to Mom. Well,
before he could even reply, my mom jumped into
the queue cell. Later that evening, Mom and I
went to the Holiday Inn and picked him up and
took him to the local ham club meeting that night.
Mom's call sign was WD9HE, but everyone knew
her by her phonetics. Happy Easter egg. In the
last several years, as her mobility became limited
to just driving a scooter, even though she hadn't
been on the air in years, she proudly displayed
her old ham radio call sign license plate on
the back. Please join me for a moment to remember
my mom, Margie, the happy Easter egg. This episode
of ham talk live is brought to you by the ham
station for 35 years the ham station has brought
new and used radios antennas accessories and
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Jeff or Dan a call at 1 -800 -729 -4373 or order
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1 -800 -729 -4373. The Ham Station, proud to
sponsor this episode of HamTalk Live. Out of
all of the ham radio podcasts in the world, this
is definitely one of them. You are listening
to Ham Talk Live with Neil Rapp WB9BPG. And welcome
back to Ham Talk Live thanks to the support of
the ham station to help bring Ham Talk Live to
you each week. Dan and Jeff are just a phone
call away to answer your questions about a new
rig or antenna. Call 1 -800 -729 -4373. Be sure
to listen to the show every Thursday night at
9 p .m. Eastern Time right here on HamTalkLive
.com. Also check out our Facebook page and Twitter
feed. Just search for HamTalk Live. Corey Shields,
KB9GHU, has spent most of his life in and around
Terre Haute in Bloomington, Indiana and has been
a ham since 1994. He studied computer science
and informatics at Indiana University. Cory is
a manager of system administrators for Mozilla,
the group behind the Firefox web browser. He
has a strong interest in digital communications,
particularly packet, as well as weather spotting,
emergency communications, and contesting. Cory
is with a group called SatNogs that is an open
source ground station network for satellites,
and he'll be presenting about SatNogs at the
Tapper Forum on Friday morning of Hamvention,
which starts at 9 .15 a .m. in room one of the
forum area. And Cory's part of the program is
at about 9 .35 a .m. So, Cory, welcome to HamTalk
Live. Thanks, Neil, and hello to you and all
of your listeners. It's good to be here with
you. Yeah, I'm glad you could step in here this
evening and talk about the SatNogs program. So,
tell us what exactly SatNogs is. and how it got
started. Sure. Well, you touched on the name.
It's a bit of an acronym. SATNOGS stands for
Satellite Networked Open Ground Station. And
there are multiple parts to this project. At
the core, the problem that we're looking to solve
is that there are more and more satellites up
in space today, especially with the CubeSat movement,
that are downlinking data constantly. day and
night, and there are not enough people listening
for the data down here on Earth. Typically, a
lot of these satellites, especially put up by
universities, are looking to amateur radio operators
to use the equipment that they have and the experience
and the knowledge that they have to capture the
telemetry that comes down from these satellites
and then relay that telemetry back to the satellite
operators. And there are a good number of amateur
radio operators who do this today and are very
successful at it. What we're looking to do is
get ahead of the, I guess what you could call
the space race in CubeSats with the ever growing
number of CubeSats being launched every month
and make sure that there is enough capacity of
ground stations that are here on earth listening
for all of that data. The way that we want to
do this is making this collection of data as
automated and autonomous as possible. That way
we can be collecting data from any location,
any time, day or night, without having to have
an operator there specifically stating the frequency
or the Doppler shift or tuning knobs like most
people have to do today. So to make that happen,
we have some software, both for a ground station
that would run at an operator's house and for
the network that runs out in the internet. And
the two can talk to each other and the network
can send commands to the ground station saying,
hey, there's a satellite that we are interested
in and it's going to pass by you. Here's the
telemetry data for the satellite. Here's the
frequency that I want you to watch. And here's
the time range. And then the ground station knows
to put that in its list of tasks to do. And when
that satellite passes by, it's going to track
that satellite, track its azimuth elevation,
and perform all of the Doppler shifting and receive
the frequency. And then it will take that data
and pass it back up to the network where it is
freely available for all researchers to have.
The other component to this project is the ground
station itself. There are very few options for
azimuth elevation rotator systems out there.
And while they're very good, they're also very
expensive. So we're looking to get people into
setting up a ground station at a lower price
point. We have homebrew antenna designs out there
on our website that people can make for fairly
low cost, anything from cross -yogis, helical
antennas, and the likes. We also have what's
I think most interesting to many people is the
ground station. Rotator itself which is mostly
3d printed parts like your gears and your the
parts to actually hold everything together inside
the case and Everything fits inside a frame of
metal using some some pretty standard equipment
These 3d printed parts then make an azimuth elevation
tracking rotator that we can use to track these
satellites. The price point of this, if you have
access to a 3D printer, comes down substantially
compared to a commercial option, albeit maybe
not as strong in terms of wind loading. We've
tested it. It's pretty strong in terms of what
kind of weight it can hold up against. but you're
talking plastic versus metal gears, there is
going to be a shorter breaking point there. But
that's pretty cool that you can just print your
own rotator. Yeah, it really is. It's every ham's
excuse to go buy a 3D printer. Oh yeah, absolutely.
As if we need an excuse, another excuse to go
buy a 3D printer. So that's pretty cool. And
so you gather all this data and the more ground
stations you have that can link into this, then
the more continuous the reception of all of this
data is going to be. Absolutely. The more coverage
we can get. I mean, there are some great hands
that are out there collecting satellite data.
Constantly as much as they can on their free
time and these guys are doing a great job And
we're just looking to take that to the next step
and make it fully automated so that you know
when they go off to their day job their their
stations can still be Collecting data and sending
that back up to the network So we want to make
this a fully autonomous process. Well, that sounds
sounds really great. So how exactly did this
Let's get started. I saw some of the history
of this. Sure, yeah. This is mostly kicked off
by the hackerspace group out in Athens, Greece.
In fact, that comprises most of the core team
to this day. They were looking to solve this
problem of not enough data being collected from
all these CubeSats that are going up. And in
process of starting this project, they also entered
into a couple of competitions. I think there
was an ESA competition, and they were finalists
for People's Choice Award there. And then recently,
just a couple years ago, the website Hackaday
has their annual contest, and the Sat Nox Project
won the Hackaday Prize. as one of the coolest
projects of the year. So that has definitely
helped out in popularity and helped spread the
word and get some more people involved. And since
it is an open source project, it really is a
community where we are looking for people to
get involved, not just from a ground station
standpoint, but to help the entire system come
along and grow. Oh, that's great. So that's a
little bit about the program now. This is our
Dayton Hamvention preview time and so we want
to kind of tie this into what's going on at Hamvention.
So you're going to be talking more about this
and we're not going to give everything away because
we want to save some things for people who are
going to the Tapper Forum, the Tucson Amateur
Packet Radio Group. But what's happening at the
Tapper Forum this year at Hamvention? Yeah, great.
And yes, Thursday morning we'll be there. I'm
sorry, Friday morning. We'll be there at Tapper
Forum. And please do come, not just for my presentation,
but the entire forum. There's a great lineup.
Right now, this year, there's a lot going on
in the digital space with amateur radio. Just
scratching the surface, you mentioned SDR. for
one. There are a couple of presentations about
that and SatNogs itself makes heavy use of SDR.
The entire radio component in a ground station
can be as simple as a $30 software -defined radio
stick. So with that kind of a jump in technology
where you can build a ground station or build
some kind of receiver or even people doing home
aircraft receiver, aircraft telemetry receivers
with components that are as cheap as a $25 radio
and a $35 computer in a Raspberry Pi is quite
a feat and there's a lot to be learned in terms
of crossing over amateur radio with these technologies
and that's a lot of what you'll hear in Tapper.
There's also some high -speed digital forum going
on as well. Some ham -wan. People also know it
as broadband ham nets, taking 802 .11 devices
and using them for amateur radio purposes. And
it's coming up with long distances there. So
you'll find that in the Tapper form. The digital
space now in ham radio, personally, this is what
excites me. Uh, in, in amateur radio, it spans
all frequencies. You go down to HF and you've
got things like PSK 31 and, and free DV all the
way up to the microwave frequencies. And some
of these satellites that are down, like, it's
an exciting time. Oh, there's, there's just all
kinds of, uh, innovations taking place and, um,
it's hard to keep up with them all. You know,
I get on the, on the air and I hear these new
things. I'm like, wait a minute. That doesn't
sound like what I usually hear. Oh, it's a new
mode. Yeah. And even those modes are ever evolving
and changing. It's, it's not just, uh, what mode
is it anymore? It's what baud rate of the mode
of my hearing. And, uh, it's kind of, it really
is hard to tell sometimes. Yeah. I used to be
really good at just listening and I can tell
you which one it was. It just doesn't work that
way anymore. So tell us exactly, you know, if
somebody does come to the Tapper Forum without
giving everything away, what are you going to
be? What are the topics that you're going to
cover in your part of that forum with the Sat
Nox? Sure, definitely. And please do come to
the forum. I know that Friday morning is a very
tough time to compete against the flea market.
But I promise you we will have something to keep
you awake that time of morning. We're going to
definitely go through the entire project, the
different aspects of the project both in the
ground station and in the network components
and the problems that we're trying to solve,
as well as show off a couple of what demonstrations
of what the network looks like, what some of
the telemetry that we collect looks like, and
how people can interact with the network. And
in addition, the forum isn't quite the place
to demonstrate a ground station fully operational
itself, but we will have a 3D printed ground
station on the floor demonstrated in the North
Hall inside the Pihara Arena as well. Oh, that
sounds great. And hopefully people can make it
to the Tapper Forum to check all of that out.
So it's time to take our final break, but we'll
be back with more with Cory Shields Keep me dying
change you right after this message from tower
electronic This episode of ham talk live is brought
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-259 .com. Proud to sponsor this episode of HamTalk
Live. We'd like to thank Tower Electronics for
sponsoring the show. Don't miss Scott and Jill
at the Calhoun, Georgia Ham Fest this weekend,
or visit their website at pl -259 .com. And some
other upcoming shows include Cedarburg, Wisconsin,
Sandwich, Illinois, and Dayton, Ohio. Corey Shields,
KB9JHU is joining us during our Dayton Hamvention
Preview. Corey will be one of the presenters
at the Tapper Forum. Hamvention, and since we're
just recording this episode, since we're doing
this late, we won't be taking any calls this
evening, but if you do have a question, feel
free to go to the Tapper forum at Dayton, or
you can check out their website. That's satnogs
.org. So Cory, how does someone get started being
a ground station if somebody wants to do this?
Great. Good question. The answer is there are
many ways. The nice thing about the design is
that from the very beginning it was designed
to be very modular in that there's no set defined
way that a ground station should be set up. And
the ground station that is designed and 3D printed
is using standard libraries. So in Linux, it's
using Hamlib, which can talk to any kind of rotor
or any kind of radio that has PC control. So
with that in mind, if somebody had an existing
ASL rotor set up with their own a system at home
and had no need to, let's say, 3D print a rotator,
we could make use of that and the client could
be installed and interfaced with the antennas
that are up on the tower today. Or if you're
starting from nothing and you have access to
a 3D printer, then you could start printing out
your own rotator. look for local hackerspace
and see if they can help you with such a project.
We are often asked about kits. I know I did Dayton
last year and at the Maker Faire this past year,
the kits were a really big thing and everyone
wanted to build one for a kit. We don't have
any kits right now. It's definitely something
that may be in the future, but right now we're
still working on getting the design really well
honed. It's in its third iteration and we feel
pretty good about this one. So getting a ground
station and getting started with the ground station,
if you have gear we could get a client installed
and the latest version of our client that just
was released last week supports hardware radios
even. So I tested it against my Kenway TS2000
with a fixed antenna outside as well. Or if you,
like I said, if you want to make your own antennas,
you want to make your own rotator, you're free
to do that as well. We have designs linked from
our website at satnogs .org. Okay, and yeah,
tell us a little bit about what people will find
at the website and about that, how they can find
those resources. Yeah, definitely. We have multiple
ways to get in touch with us and to reach out.
Like I said, the project itself is all open source
and right now github .com is a very popular place
as a code repository. So all of our code is available
on GitHub and that's linked to from our website
as well. So in terms of code for the client or
even code to build the rotator, it's all there.
We do have documentation that we maintain as
the core project, both for building the rotator
on the hardware side and for setting up the client
on the software side. And those are linked to
from the website too. We also have a wiki that
just started up. Like I said, there's no one
set way in which we want to dictate how a ground
station has to be set up. So we are looking to
the community to contribute their tips and their
tricks and various tweaks that they've made to
their stations. And then we have a community
link. And what this is is this is a web forum.
Like you would commonly find on in many communities
where we have various categories in the web forum
one devoted to hardware and the software and
a web forum specifically for some some observation
conversations, so if There we find an observation
that is is of interest and want to discuss that
we can do that there as well Great. So that website
is sat nogs org. That's SAT N O G S dot org Sat
nogs dot org and be sure to stop by there and
there's some some pretty cool pictures too of
some of these antennas and Some of the ground
stations that are out there Yeah, and we've got
again and that's another category that we have
on the the community forums site is specifically
for a picture gallery and Personally, one of
the neatest things I think about about this project
is is when you see, you know a random picture
of a ground station that a group is building,
you know overseas somewhere in some country you
didn't even know somebody was was attempting
this in and I think by now we're hitting most
of the continents with ground stations. They're
being built. Okay, so let's say somebody doesn't
have the access to the 3D printer, doesn't have
the azimuth and elevation rotator. How does somebody
get involved with this without really being a
ground station? Great. We need lots of help outside
of ground stations. Given that this is an open
source project and we are looking for code contributions
from people who have programming skills, so we're
definitely looking for programmers. The code
on both the network side and the client side
is all written in Python. So if you're good with
Python and you don't have the resources for a
ground station but still want to get involved,
we can definitely use your help there. And going
back to the software -defined radio aspect, we
want to... push the limits of software -defined
radio in these ground stations with the newer
modes that are going up in satellites today.
They're downlinking in faster baud rates and
newer experimental modes that require a lot of
tweaks on the reception side to be able to demodulate
and then decode these signals. So we're getting
into a software package called GNU Radio, which
then defines how that radio looks like in software.
So people who are good with radio, good with
RF, good with GNU radio, we're definitely looking
for help there. Anybody who wants to just get
involved and help with keeping satellite data
up to date, that's another big need that we have.
We've got a database that we've started that
is One aspect of the project, but it's not Completely
tied to the project is is just a general satellite
database that DB sat nogs org and then there's
a Programming hook into this where other people
can make use of this data outside of sat nogs
as well Cube sats are going up all of the time.
We just had three new CubeSats launched yesterday
on amateur radio frequencies. And so keeping
the data up to date, keeping those frequencies
up to date and any changes in the status of those
satellites is definitely a big community effort
as well. And the nice thing about this whole
network is that people Once you get involved,
you can send commands to the network. You can
specify a satellite and a time of day that you
want to watch the satellite and look for observations.
And then you can actually collect the data from
other people's ground stations. So you don't
necessarily have to have a ground station of
your own. But we're looking for contributors
all across the board. So hop on our forums, check
out the websites. We also have a chat channel
on IRC on Freenode. It's pound sat knobs. We
will love to hear from you in any way possible.
All right. Well, that sounds like a major undertaking.
So I'm sure you can use some help. And this is
probably a never ending quest here. But what
is the status of things just right now? It does
seem like a never -ending quest because ultimately
you would love to see hundreds of ground stations
across the world and a network that is sending
commands and keeping them busy day and night.
Right now it's still in heavy development phase.
There is... There are a few ground stations that
we have across the globe that are fully functional
today, and even more that are in development
and that are in testing on our dev site. So we
have a couple of instances of the network software,
one that we have for true production and one
we have for testing and development. So we've
got a lot more of the ground stations that are
still in that kind of sandbox mode as we're testing
things out. So what we're working on right now
is fixing that software -defined radio piece
in GNU Radio so that we can have better autonomy
of collecting the data, not only demodulating
it, but then taking that next step and actually
decoding the data. So let's say it's a Morse
code stream and it's sending telemetry, we've
got a lot of observations collected from satellites
that are just downlinking Morse code, and somebody
can go on our website and actually listen to
those streams and decode by hand, but we'd like
to go to the next step and actually have a software
that then decodes it, which is a little bit tricky
given Doppler shift and not having a perfect
Doppler shift. every millisecond. So taking that
a step further, we also have plans of doing the
same kind of thing for other data modes. AFSK
is a very popular mode for satellites, 1200 baud.
That's going to be the next one to hit on. And
then getting into the... Excuse me. the experimental
modes and the faster baud rates. So as it is
today, we do have some ground stations with more
coming up here in the near future that can automatically
capture observations from satellites. So that
pool of resources is only going to grow over
time and the capabilities of what we can automatically
demodulate and then automatically decode is growing
as well. We have new code getting put into this
project every week and I'm seeing commits every
week getting caught up with the changes that
are going into this. I know there are a lot of
projects out there kind of like this and there
have been in the past. I think one thing that
really helps this project that I've seen is that
there is a lot of community momentum behind the
project so there are a lot of good things to
come. That's great. I'm glad you were able to
come on to the show and tell us all about this
technology. And again, Corey's presenting at
the Tapper Forum. That's on Friday morning of
Hamvention in Forum Room 1. The forum starts
at 9 .15 a .m. and Corey's first step, I believe,
after the introduction. So about 9 .30, 9 .35
a .m. will be the SatNog's presentation and then
the demonstration will be in the North Hall in
space 212 so if you can't get by the forum at
least go by and check out the demo and you said
you'll have the 3d printed rotator on display
is that right yes we'll have it on display and
depending on the booth layout you know we are
limited by space we should have it moving as
well now Um, you know, we would love to have
it receiving signals as well, but, uh, you know,
the, the Hara arena might not be so, uh, so forgiving
in, in letting signals through the, the ceiling
there. So, uh, we'll, we'll definitely try, but,
uh, no promises in indoors there. Okay. So again,
that's the North hall space two 12. And, uh,
Corey, thanks so much for joining us on the show
tonight and good luck with your presentation.
Thank you. Appreciate it. We'll see you then.
Yeah, that's Corey Shields KB9GHU and that's
a wrap for this week's edition of HamTalk Live.
I'd like to thank Corey and all the listeners
out there in cyberspace and invite you all back
next Thursday night or actually it's this Thursday
night this time at 9 p .m. Eastern Time. Carol
Perry WB2MGP will be here to talk about the Instructor's
Forum and the Youth Forum. to be held at this
year's Dayton Hamvention. And if you haven't
seen the Twitter post, you have a chance to win
a big radio just for attending that forum. So
we'll be talking about that on Thursday night
live with Carole Perry. So for a list of all
of our upcoming guests, be sure to visit HamTalkLive
.com. So, for now with Corey Shields, KB9GHU,
this is Neil Rapp, WB9VPG, saying 7 -3, 7 -5,
and may the good DX be yours. Thanks for watching!