🛰️IT'S ALIVE!! Autonomous Satellite Tracker, Overview/Hints And Tips
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 24 พ.ค. 2020
- Here it is. FINALLY, the Autonomous satellite tracker is complete. In this video, I will give you a complete overview of what this build consists of, as well as my experiences and struggles along the way. You will also see a quick demo of it actually tracking AO-92 in my room.
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Links to the parts seen here in this video for the build:
amzn.to/2A7rIGO Huzzah ESP8266
amzn.to/2TB1xPR Adafruit GPS
amzn.to/2ZzO6Dx 9DOF orientation sensor
amzn.to/36sYrTb Servo controller
amzn.to/2ZzA9W4 12v to 5v step down DC converter
amzn.to/3d1uqwh 12v to 6v step down DC converter
amzn.to/2XzxAAW Ethernet RJ45 breakout
amzn.to/3gkpS64 Clear project box
amzn.to/2B0XTs1 Sony tripod
amzn.to/2ZGXNjH Powerpole distribution
www.servocity.com/spt400-tilt... Tilt servo system
www.servocity.com/cm-785hb-se... Azimuth servo
www.servocity.com/9-0-channel C channel
www.bioennopower.com/collecti... Bioenno battery
#satellitetracker #hamradio #satellite
Nice job Eric! The beauty of doing projects like this is the learning from experimentation! You made it!
WOW, I understand your frustration after trying to learn to program a DMR radio and getting all my settings right for FT4 and FT8. None of those took nearly a year though. I applaud your tenacity in sticking with this!! I always found that I could never give up on these things. I had to temporarily walk away until my frustration left. Way to go on this!!!!
Awesome Eric! Nice to see your project come together!
Nice to see that you finally got it working, Great video
Good job getting it up and running. Quite an inspiration.
Now you can fiddle with the software and stability.
Thanks for series.
Fantastic work. I had to laugh a little though, most of the people doing an open source development project say the same glad you stuck in there. I'm definitely looking to do this project in the future.
Oh man ! Hats off to your persistence !
Thank you for your video on this antenna. I bought one and am super impressed with it. Very easy to set up and it works very well.
I like to make microcontroller/ electronics projects as a hobby and I can relate to the year long crucible you went through to finish your satellite tracker. You really did an amazing job on your satellite tracker despite all the little demons who work tirelessly to sabotage your jumper wire continuity, cold solder joints, and Arduino package incompatibilities. You deserve to be proud of what you built. Likewise, the person whose original plans you implemented in your project should be proud of their own creation and that you were able to update and improve on it together.
There is always so much more to learn no matter how much experience you get and, by their nature, these kinds of bench electronics projects from scratch have so many links in the chain to fail or get missed that error is more the norm than the exception. It can often be maddening!
Congrats Eric !
Thanks for not giving into the frustration and getting the tracker up and running.
Frustration keeps so many from the taste of success.
You sticking with it and sharing your experience may encourage others to TRY and then share their "flavor" of success { with their mods & tweaks }.
Looking forward to a video seeing this tracker in action and making a SAT contact using it - a true taste of victory. Well done !
Hope to have QSO with you someday, until then keep up the great work. - 73 K9BBQ
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Congrats! Great job. As they proclaim in "Galaxy Quest| "Never give up, never surrender!"
Eric, genuinely this is a fantastic video… Especially showing behind the curtain with all the fits and starts… Just like I always have with every project I start. I congratulate you on your tenacious fortitude to get 'er done, my friend! 73 de Robert K3RRR
Great accomplishment your hard work and patience we all benefit from Thanks so much
Nice to see you got finished with your project.
Hey Eric, there is a simple fix for the "twitchyness" of your system: instead of measuring and immediately setting the position, take a few measures, average them and then set the position. You can even use a "moving window" where the current measure is averaged with, say, the last 10. A new cycle begins, you drop the 11th oldest measurement and take a new 10 sample average. This should remove the "high frequency" (10hz or so) noise of the sensor...
Congratulations Eric
I'm a brand new guy, and this is way beyond my cognition and situational awareness. That being said this is wickedly cool and I appreciate you sharing.
Well done! It's taken me TWO years so far to come up with a 3D printed satellite rotator. I'm finally at the 'fit it in the loft' stage :) Mine uses an ESP32.
Make a video on it
Awesome job. Thank you !!
Awesome build well done 👌👏👏👏
Its alive! ITS ALIVE!!! Glad to see it come together
Awesome job! You did it! Looks really complicated. I'm glad you were able to finish. 73's KC2JDR
Hi Eric,
While the mount was twitching, I noticed the aluminum frame that hold the azimuth servo was flexing. I believe the mounting system does not have the stiffness needed for the job. I'm an amateur astronomer and would have modified a computerized Alt/Az mount. The software to control those mounts can also track satellites. Stay safe. 73 WB3BJU
really cool, thanks eric
Thank you for sharing a cool video. You have given me a new project. 73.
My hats off to you been thinking of doing this now I’m thinking of just buying a telescope mount and making it work I’m sure it’s more money and sure it’s a lot less headaches, thanks for all your work
I appreciate your frustrated tone. Been there myself, too many times. Why in the world can't we get an industry standard on some of this stuff? Hardware and libraries, all of them different, all of them incompatible with one another. I too have a junk box full of arduino boards. You seem to keep better records than I do--for the life of me I can't remember what the boards were for nor why they failed to give me what I wanted. I also respect your perseverance. Way to go!
VERY COOL ERIC
Holy crap, that is SWEET! I just finished putting a boom on an 11 element yagi, there are two good ISS passes in a few days. Sadly I don't have an adapter for my HT yet, and my mobile radio only does 2m. So for now I'm limited to V-V satellites only, have fun with your tracker, 73s from W8IJC! (soon to be KE8OHW)
That laugh in the beginning was epic..well put together very interesting. I got a elk up in the air and like it a lot. I need try it on some satellites with it and that tracking set up would be a interesting learning project.
Congrats! You did it! That weekend job would probably take me 5 years. 😜
nice work eric!
Looks great! I'm curious on it's performance in the next video. Keep the update videos coming, perhaps I will build one too, seeing my 10 year old son is interested in satellites.
Congratulations on getting it to work! I am planning on building the same tracker. 73 de AD0WE
Nice! I thought about trying this a year ago but never really got started. My other hobby is astronomy and I thought about trying to use a telescope mount for this. You can plug in orbital elements into a star map program so long as the mount can keep up with the satellite, it should work.
Can't wait for Field Day to see this puppy in action !!
My heart jumped at 'I'm giving this away'
No more slow-motion run away servos! Bravo!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA yah you should have seen that one
Finally! From South Africa
FYI, the part number you need from Servo City for the tilt servo system is SPT-D485HW-5-A (assembled with newer servo - the old servo listed in the original plans is NLA). $129, assembled.
Bravo! Very cool
Hang the battery within the tripod to increase stability, you need to keep the weight central and as low as possible. Fishing rod tripods often have a hook within them to hang a bucket of seawater for stability. Nice project.
Hi Eric, another great video, your an inspiration to all the gunners....Gunna do this and Gunna do that. Great you complementing your new 9700 with great homebrew tech. Its what its all about !!! , getting my 9700 in a few months Pete VK3TQ
Good job sticking with it Eric. I look forward to see it in action. Going to try using it for Field Day?
sure am
Great work! I like the ESP solution much better I use those all the time for various projects, nice work!
Iterating through several designs is a great way to come up with an optimal solution.
May I suggest you add an eight to twelve inch piece of straight pipe coming out of the lower "T" and moving the nine DOF sensor to the end to keep it away from all of the metal in the tripod and the bolts you're using.
Hose clams aren't going to hold that together really well. I'd suggest PVC cement which is how the PVC tubing and "Ts" are meant to be assembled. Before you glue it all together hot glue in a 1/4-20 bolt into the bottom PVC tee so you can spin it apart between the PVC "T" and the tripod. If you don't hot glue the bolt in you could probably get a box end wrench in the "T" to hold the bold when you screw it into the tripod.
I can't wait for the rain to stop so we can see it work outside.
Totally cool!
Congratulations Eric on a job well done!! I agree with @Rafael Pinto - a moving average would help dampen the movements somewhat. I appreciate your frustrations - spent the entire day working on a WiFi bridge project with flaky firmware - should have only taken an hour max!!!
Wonderful and hreatful wow bery nice
Outstanding
BTW, I have the same issue with my Bosch/adafruit IMU, off like 10 degrees. I jerked around with it for hours to no avail. If you ever figure it out I’d be interested. Used for telescope but turning it into an EME tracker th-cam.com/video/v2pqya3c1_M/w-d-xo.html
Still working on my first self contained Hammo can. Don't have as much in that as you do but I have made a few mistakes and changes. Great job. 73 K6EGP
Hey the securing of the battery on the tripod leg with velcro is as rough as guts. You need to come up with a better idea than that. I suggest put the battery in a small ‘Pelican’ type box with outputs for two sets of Mini-Andersen plugs. One set for the solar panel or for DC charging and the other for a radio or the antenna tilt/panner.
Looks good
Put the battery in a drawstring bag, then hang it from the center, bottom hook on the tri-pod. It will help keep center of of the tri-pod sturdy..
I am at the 20:55 mark and have this vision of me having all that stuff in a pile and me jumping up and down on it . On with the rest of the video
Very cool 😎👍🏻
use high quality non metal fasteners eg. TEFLON or (3D printed) for screw and gears. This will reduce skew refraction off the sensor. You may try to shield sensor a little with a grounded tinfoil cage to prove a point. If its still an issue. I'm excited for your project, well done.
Maybe it has been said before. But the motor setup needs a counterweight of that of the antenna. That makes if less wonky.
But I think it that’s way to much work for just a weekend project. If it were a more permanent I would figure that out.
But very nice job. It works great for what you want it to do.
At 14.0 l usually use solder to cover the small pins so that the wire sit tightly on the board and l check continuity with a multi meter.
Nice, goog job.
I've thought about trying something like this if I ever tried working satellites but was a little turned off by the software side. At least now I have somewhere to start!
"I need your clothes, your boots, and your motorcycle."
great job now that it is completed , use it for field day and contact the ISS if it is on the right path
I was thinking along the same line as Roger P. However I would take a second tee and make a sawcut in the street of the tee and glue the bottom tee and that second tee about 3 to 4 inches apart. Then slide the 9DOF into the slot keeping it away from the metal on the tripod and the antenna.
73 William W1KZP
very cool! Now that you got the build process down...build another one! LOL! JK. I have neither the time, the patience, or the smarts to build something like that. I wish I had your talents! I can't wait for you to get it outside and make a video of it in action with some QSO's. 73!
Thats way cool !! Too Bad it was raining cats an dogs today !! thanks for the video from IRC !!
Great !
Excellent outcome after a lot of effort. Maybe you could still put the gyro higher up if you put a plug and socket in line and run the line through the conduit. And get yourself a good quality soldering iron for such jobs. I got sick of cheap irons and invested in the Goot RX-802AS, and have never looked back.
Regarding your previous comment about the music..... The joy of doing what I do is I can do whatever I want to do. Can't make everybody happy.
Eric, This is cool. I wanna build one so I can use it with my 9700. Be cool out on a nice day set this thing up in a field and make some contacts.
Thanks for the videos. I been watching them all. 73 Hope to catch you on 10 again was cool being in one of your vids CYA W0JAY
I've only just started watching but I'm hoping this winds up scaring the crap out of those neighbors 😂
Great job Eric. GO HUSKIES!!
do not ask me where I got this shirt or the city they are based out of HAHAHA it takes YOU to actually notice that HAHAHA GREAT EYES!!!! 73 friend
@@HamRadioConcepts University of Connecticut which has their main campus in Storrs, CT. We lived 45 minutes away from it and both kids graduated from there. Famous for the girls basketball team.
I'll sell this shirt to you if your interested hahahahahahahahaha
@@45Unit and congrats to your kids you must be proud
I've myself have had a couple of them 2 month one weekend projects myself. lol
nice loookin rig ya set up there 73 just like our quad copter stuff just make a slit in the t=bout a inch higher n slide it in just slide it in lol
After watching this video, I don't feel so bad about my two recent failed attempts at getting an HF Yagi up to 35 feet , without a tower or mast. I'm now ready for brilliant idea number 3 after my two previous brilliant ideas turned out to be dumb. 73 de Andy K3UK
I played neo 6m n the alike a long time. Both of them will work properly. Should your gps antenna face upward, it will work better.
Has there been a detailed instructions booklet written for this project? I am not a computer savy guy but enjoy tracking satellites and using the FM and Linear Transponders aboard.
Great job! Maybe someday I’ll give this a try. But your pain and suffering may have scared me off this project?!?!?!? LOL
Nah, he's got all the parts down now. He went through the trial and error for you to give you a refined list :) give it a go friendo
If yer tripod has a center hook between the legs you could hang the battery in the center of the tripod for stability. I know my camera tripod has a center hook so you can hang a weight down through the middle of the legs for stabilizing the tripod.
I will take the feather board!!!
Extend the PVC out of the bottom tee about six inches and hook your accelerometer sensor to that to get it away from the bolt and gears.
I will do that tomorrow thanks
@@HamRadioConcepts If it takes a dump on you I'm not taking credit...
@@1crazynordlander Thats messed up man... SOMEBODY has to take ownership HAHAHAHAHAHA
You're "angle" might be off because the magnetic declination in Florida is -6 degrees from magnetic north (vs true north)
I will state the obvious.
We would have never gone to the moon with Chinese electronics.
Kudos for not taking a jump off a very tall building. I tend to avoid things like that thus preserving my sanity.
What ratio servos are needed?, as a newbie...just asking because that is a option at servo city
Enjoyed your presentation. Though I did not understand it all. Maybe a little better presentation on the schematics of the whole thing, along with the visual and your actual purpose of building the satellite tracker in the first place. It is not necessarily complicated yet we cannot see the whole picture just bits and pieces. In other words if you want us to actually build one, then we need exact information. Maybe there is another way to build it without using arduino. It is all very interesting !
now if only I could find those servers in the UK.
At least I have a clue what I'm looking for now :-)
Fantastic job, it will be fun to see working outside for sure...thanks for sharing...Vic KE8JWE
Houston Your a go for launch lol
Hi!! what is the APP you use as a satellite data base??
I use those cheap patch leads a lot and have never had a problem with them. Perhaps your leads were mechanically stressed at some point? The magnetic sensor is not the best way to get azimuth on land, especially in a built-up area. Local magnetic interference can easiy give errors of 20 degrees or more on some headings, and so it really needs calibrating at every location. It can also be affected when you move the radio or other equipment around, and also when current changes in nearby wires (e.g. the servo wires). A better system is to align the tripod with true North by hand and use a stepper motor to move the aerial in azimuth. Have an optical sensor or microswitch that operates at a fixed azimuth position (relative to the tripod). At power-up the stepper motor rotates till the sensor trips, which it sets as being North, and from then on you set the azimuth position by sending the appropriate number of steps to the motor. To find true North at a new location, take the GPS location at the position of the tripod, and then walk a hundred meters or so away in a roughly Northern direction. Now walk East or West until the GPS shows exactly the same latitude as the location of the tripod. Mark that spot with a flag or something, and you can then rotate the tripod until the aerial is pointing directly at that flag with the rotator set to an azimuth of 0 and a declination of 0
Switch the rx n tx wire from gps module,change the baud of pc arduino ide when the gps does not work.
You can get a screw terminal shield.
@HamRadioConcepts Can you comment on any additional QRM generated from the tracker picked up on your 9700? I built mine very similar to yours, using only your parts list compiled from the couple of videos you've done. Same ELK antenna, a little different setup regarding position of the tilt and pan motor placement (more like Elwoods design.) My noise floor goes from 0 to s6 when i power up my unit.... very difficult to work weak signals with a self inflicted s6 noise floor. :) I really think its the voltage regulators. Ferrite has helped about 1/2 S unit.
Eric, good afternoon. I would like to know if you can guide me to make a rotor for one of my Arrow, I would like to leave it fixed high to work the satellites with my FT-818. Maybe you can tell me where I can buy one, or how to make one, or if you have one for sale. I live in El Salvador.
I have wanted one of these since I got my license. The problem with this now is some of the parts are no longer available. I admire your dedication to solving all of these problems. When are you going to sell it?
never going to sell it. and what parts are not available?
@@HamRadioConcepts Some of the actuators from Servo City are discontinued. It is amazing you brought this up again because I was just looking at it again when I realized now I have to come up with new gearing. Good thing you bought the parts when you did. BTW, missed you on the ham radio TH-cam bunch shows.
Congratulations! Persistence pays. N9QIL
MOM: it’s time to come in..... In a minute Ma I’m playing satellites !!!! 👍
Some of items are unavailable do you have a updated BOM
Beautiful! de N3LUD
Do you have the zip file of those libraries?
Aha, 8266 . I've yet to do anything with one, have it, and it does a lot. I think it still used the arduino ide even ? That one looks nice. My antenna's are much too large for it though. That said, very nice. And probably pricey.