The UNSW-EC0 Ground Station

Transcription

1 The UNSW-EC0 Ground Station Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research

2 The Ground Station Amatuer radio station (VK2UNS) Student & Staff operators Evolved during UNSW-EC0 dev and operations UNSW-EC0 dev : commands and system interfaces Operations: 4am passes are quite motivating HW & SW GS has logged over 277 hours of operations since going fully autonomous

3 The Ground Station Original System Gpredict & Hamlib Free (GPL) Buggy (crash / freeze / unexpected behaviour) Single Threaded (IO blocking nightmare) Rigid CSP-TERM Gpredict hamlib CSP-TERM Slightly modified (additional commands made during dev) Manual Inter process KISS over USB RS232

4 The Ground Station The at System Unix at command Used to schedule CSP-TERM CSP-TERM + batch Python module multithreaded Eventually replaced the need for Gpredict Not user friendly Technically outperforms prev solution cron at batch file Gpredict CSP-TERM hamlib Inter process KISS over USB RS232

5 The Ground Station Current System Web based interface remote control Automated scheduling, downloads, uploads & commands Scalable client / server architecture multithreaded python daemon auto blackout recovery service HW catalogue (like hamlib) configurable (deploy anywhere)

6 The Ground Station Current System cmd queue ftp queue gs conf Web Server pygs SMTP Client batch result Downloads Beacons CSP-TERM batch file daemon FTP Server pass logs Downloads Uploads rotctl rigctl HW Catalogue & Drivers SSH Server rsync

7 Archival Server LNA KR-5600 Cam Radio KR-5400 TNC rotctl GS PC Mission Server Op. Team Cam GS PC Dev Server Router Internet coax (FM) PTT IF (Audio GFSK) KISS over USB RS232 Ethernet IO & Motor Power

8 Antenna Pointing Sky Heatmaps Satellite spends most time at low elevation Southern sky is busiest 277 Hours of operations in last 10 months (Inc. EM time)

9 Antenna Pointing Histograms

10 Evolution of UNSW-EC0 Link com rssi The com rssi command polls EC0 Returns RSSI and RFERR Useful to Close the loop Monitor equipment We only run one com rssi cmd / pass by default 2 relocations 1 photo campaign 1708 & 1806 incomplete

11 Evolution of UNSW-EC0 Link RSSI Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) indicative of link No significant change

12 Evolution of UNSW-EC0 Link RF Error RFERR allows us to see the error in uplink frequency Nanocom is much more tolerant of errors than the Kenwood Need to confirm if Kenwood or NanoCom is drifting

13 Questions?

14 The Ground Station Hardware Kenwood TS2000 Meets Legal Requirements for automation 2 VFOs + no PTT contextual control Controller Arduino based Originally ran GS232 Now ROT2PROG Hard Stop at the South Flip mode 2 x 20 element yagis 16.8dB RHCP No motor velocity control Bang Bang only 20 db LNA PTT sw >> VOX sw Pot feedback noisey MAV filter

15 Base Station Kenwood TS2000 UHF / VHF Meets Legal Requirements for Automation (morse & timer) 2 VFOs + no PTT contextual control 2 x 20 element yagis 16.8dB RHCP UHF ( MHz) 20 db LNA PTT sw >> VOX sw

16 Rotator Controller Arduino based Originally ran GS232 Now ROT2PROG Hard Stop at the South Flip mode No motor velocity control Bang Bang only Pot feedback noisey MAV filter