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EngineerGuy314 / pico-WSPRer

Minimalist WSPR tracker for pico-balloons utilizing Raspberry Pi Pico (or Rp2040) as the RF generator (aka The Cheapest Tracker In The World™). More info: [WIKI](https://github.com/EngineerGuy314/pico-WSPRer/wiki/pico%E2%80%90WSPRer-(aka-Cheapest-Tracker-in-the-World%E2%84%A2))
MIT License
50 stars 9 forks source link

Option to use as a stationary WSPR beacon? #27

Closed nilspupils closed 5 months ago

nilspupils commented 5 months ago

First of all thank you very much for this wonderful piece of software! Is there any chance you are planning to develop this also into a stationary beacon with the option to disable tracking and to choose the transmitting band (and processor clock) within the console options? Thanks and best wishes, Nils

serych commented 5 months ago

It should be possible to add the CPU clock option to the console menu. What do you mean by disabling tracking? There are Maidenhead coordinates in the normal WSPR packet and you need to use GPS receiver to correct the oscillator frequency. Or do you just mean a beacon transmitting constant frequency? You still need a GPS to correct it.

Jakub, OK1SE

EngineerGuy314 commented 5 months ago

into a stationary beacon with the option to disable tracking as serych said there is no reason you cannot use it as stationary beacon right now.

If you configure it just for the Zachtek protocol, it will transmit perfectly standard WSPR Type-3 messages. oops, i take that back, it will encode altitude into the power fields, which is definitely not standard...

Adding a config option to do just a single, WSPR type-1 beacon message shouldnt be too hard, and I agree is good idea. I will keep this issue open until I can get around to it.

But I guess the question is, how flexible does it need to be? Does it need option to specify which timeslot? Every 2 minutes or once ten minutes enough? At specific fixed frequencies, or frequency hopping? Alternating different bands on different timeslots? I might need to re-think the way I am doing the user-interface, it might be very cumbersome to implement this many selections. But I can see a lot of use for a dirt-cheap WSPR beacon.

30, 40 or 80 meter bands shouldn't be too hard to implement. And for a stationary application with an AC power source we could put back the overclocking and probably run it on higher frequencies too.

EngineerGuy314 commented 5 months ago

You still need a GPS to correct it.

absolutely. Although, if you use a pico-W, it might be possible to do frequency correction based on reading time values from ntp.org or something similar. It would have to average out readings over several minutes, but that would be enough if you mount it somewhere with relatively constant temperature. not really something i want to pursue.

whallmann commented 5 months ago

my opinion: dont put some new bugs in there for this tiny ballon version. It may be a better idea to Clone a new project?!

EngineerGuy314 @.***> schrieb am Fr., 28. Juni 2024, 16:05:

You still need a GPS to correct it. absolutely. Although, if you use a pico-W, it might be possible to do frequency correction based on reading time values from ntp.org or something similar. It would have to average out readings over several minutes, but that would be enough if you mount it somewhere with relatively constant temperature. not really something i want to pursue.

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nilspupils commented 5 months ago

Hi all, and thanks for the great replies so far. I was in the garden all day and didn't expect such quick feedback. First of all sorry about the confusion, i had the impression the WSPR message sent by the software included extra information used for tracking the balloon with the U4B or Zachtek protocol. This is probably a misunderstanding on my side (because noob :). I know the GPS is mandatory and it would be cool to have it used for the Maidenhead locator (to bring your beacon with you when traveling). My biggest wish would be to select the transmitting band via the console, perhaps also the repititions or slots inside the band, but this could be done manually. As a newly licensed ham i am not yet allowed to transmit in the 20m band, so i would like to be able to choose the 15m band, or others. (I know the processor speed would probably have to increased for that). And i absolutely didn't want to overload the ballon version with too many options, this would be better for a seperate version. Thank you very much for considering my suggestions! Best regards, Nils

EngineerGuy314 commented 5 months ago

I will add these to the list of features for a future cloned or forked version.