Communications

[ethanharstad]

What communications methods do we want to support? Supporting at least one of the common 900 MHz long haul radios (XTend, RFD900) is practically a requirement. Should we also support a short range radio via an XBee footprint? Is amateur radio based tracking still prevalent enough to justify adding OpenTracker like functionality or possibly even an on-board transmitter?

@AerodyneLabs/contributors Blocking #1

[chrisreis53]

I would say adding an onboard HAM transmitter (or at least a footprint for an addition) would be benificial if we can come up with a cheap, BERT-like solution.

As for short range communication, is there a cheap alternative to xbee? Do we want it to come stock or be an addon?

Christopher J. Reis Iowa State University Systems Engineering - Graduate Student 2nd Lieutenant, 705th Combat Training Squadron, USAF chrisreis53@gmail.com

On Mon, Mar 3, 2014 at 9:22 PM, Ethan Harstad notifications@github.comwrote:

What communications methods do we want to support? Supporting at least one of the common 900 MHz long haul radios (XTend, RFD900) is practically a requirement. Should we also support a short range radio via an XBee footprint? Is amateur radio based tracking still prevalent enough to justify adding OpenTracker like functionality or possibly even an on-board transmitter?

@AerodyneLabs/contributors

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/AerodyneLabs/Helios/issues/5 .

[matgyver]

I would agree, I believe for the HAB part, amateur radio is still a prevalent method for tracking if nothing else for backup means.

The nice thing about the xBee footprint, is that there are other devices that work with that foot print. A good example is the Synapse boards but there are also Bluetooth and WiFi options as well that work in that footprint. So to me adding that footprint does help expand how the board communicates beyond the HAM and 900 MHz options. I would keep it as an option, have the holes for the headers so that either the user can solder it in or we could solder it in as an option at manufacturing.

[ethanharstad]

We should be able to arrange the pin mapping in a way that an additional COM system can be added to the stack, this way we won't need to worry about putting a transmitter on this board.

So then are we interested in supporting an external audio radio in a similar manner to the OpenTracker? If so, would the audio tones be generated by Hyperion or should we put a slave processor on this board? My vote would be for a slave processor generating the tones. That would allow the process to be asynchronous for CDHS and fairly transparent to the end user.

How cheap would an integrated transmitter have to be before it would make sense to be on-board?

[chrisreis53]

I would think an 8 bit PIC or 16 bit dsPIC would be a great slave processor. We could even set it up do do multiple audio modulation schemes.

As for a definition of "cheap transmitter", I would think a $50 add on for the overall end price of module would be a reasonable goal. I think it would be worth it to see if we could fit it in the XBee form factor.

Another thought would be to have multiple XBee connections for different radios. Especially if we decide to do put a 144MHz or 440MHz radio in that form factor. We could probably make the slave processor also multiplex serial communications to the various radios since I can't imagine having a very high baud rate if we're using audio tones.

On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 4:04 PM, Ethan Harstad notifications@github.comwrote:

We should be able to arrange the pin mapping in a way that an additional COM system can be added to the stack, this way we won't need to worry about putting a transmitter on this board.

So then are we interested in supporting an external audio radio in a similar manner to the OpenTracker? If so, would the audio tones be generated by Hyperion or should we put a slave processor on this board? My vote would be for a slave processor generating the tones. That would allow the process to be asynchronous for CDHS and fairly transparent to the end user.

How cheap would an integrated transmitter have to be before it would make sense to be on-board?

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/AerodyneLabs/Helios/issues/5#issuecomment-36690424 .