I'm so happy to see you working with Balint! He's done so much for the SDR community over the years. If you'd like to help his family, he's running a donation for Rett Syndrome. I'm sure raising awareness of Rett Syndrome would mean a lot to him and his family.
There’s a little inside joke in the GNU Radio community. Inside GNU Radio Companion, you can turn on a display of your flowgraph complexity. The units are in “ubal”, which is short for “micro-Balints”. Because Balint was (and clearly still is!) famous for his very complex flowgraphs!
Well that's an idea, run some sounds in our Apollo system and record how it comes out... The uplink data should sound quite interesting, as it is in the audio band. Then let Hainbach do his magic ;-)
This was just amazing! It really puts into perspective the difference between the older tech and new things like SDR, which in turn shows just how incredibly advanced the Apollo equipment was, to be able to do what it did back in the 60s.
"how old was the spacecraft?" "i think it was launched in 1978, so pretty old".. thanks guys.. I was launched in 1973.. i feel older than pretty old right now.. amazing video, as always
1973 ?? I was in junior high already! Totally engrossed in Space flight, NASA etc.. My uncle gave me a "home study course" on electronics complete with parts to make the labs. Vacuum tube voltmeter anyone?
'78 is old for a spacecraft. For comparison, the Apple ][ was only a year old, and the IBM PC would only appear 3 years later. Computer and space technology is basically still in it's infancy
When Marc first talked about the satellite my first thought was "OMG some nerds went rogue and used Linux to tell an ancient satellite to fire its thrusters!" Which is exactly what happened but they got permission first. I'd love to hear what an old Nasa Engineer thinks about the small book sized SDR doing the same work as the room full of old hardware. Amazing to think about.
Guys…. No words. I envy you the toys and fun and profoundly admire your work. Many many thanks for allowing me to share. I am 73 years old but still conversant with today’s tech so I understand the scope of the challenge you set yourself. Hats humbly iff and greetings from Argentina
My brain hurts but in a good way! Never ceases to amaze me how you collaboratively pull together brilliant people in participate in your amazing projects. You all are literally on another planet! 👍 Kudos to Mr Fancy Pants Marc pulling this all together and equally to those who have participated. I personally take less than 1nS to hit the play video button when your downloads appears, makes my day! Thank you all...
As someone that works with modern radio equipment I was having a good time watching 100s of pounds of 1970s analog gear going to work! But SDRs are really cool also! Keep up the good work love this channel
This series is so good, and there is so much info here presented in the perfect format, for me at least. I'm on my second time through - and I expect will come back to some sections - thanks to everyone involved in this.
Videos like this really humble me. I'm not a dumb man by any means. But these guys are on a different level. The engineers that originally designed this hardware are on another planet.
That was fantastic! Shows how much the technology advanced but also how pretty advanced they were back then despite the bulky equipment they had. The beauty of it all is that the space program made it possible that we have this SDR and other technology now. Kudos to them and to the team that is "re-doing" all that.
This series has become my second favorite (the top one remains your restoration of the AGC), really cool how so many smart people are pitching in their expertise to make this project happen. Also RIP Arecibo :(
OMG, thank you very for ISEE-3. I remember giving for the initiative, but I didn't really followed up on it. I didn't realized how awesome, and adventure it was. Just part about puting your own hardware in the Arecibo Dome, was awesome. Great content as always, thanks!
I never enjoy being so out of my depth, as I do when watching your Videos. As a child of the Space Race era, this stuff just delights me. Thank you so much.
This S-band stuff is so cool. I used to tinker back when satellite TV was still using some of that equipment. I don't know why, but it's very satisfying capturing signals from space. I really got interested in this stuff back in the late 70s when our high school had a guy from NASA show up to do a presentation with a bunch of telemetry equipment which he demonstrated. Most of the kids were unimpressed but I was on the edge of my seat! He even demonstrated some of the spacecraft sensors and I remember being blown away by what they could do.
This video encouraged me to install Gnuradio and starting playing. I have an rtl sdr and the next purchase is a sdr transmitter alongside all the other ham gear!
Comme vous l'avez dit "Chapeau bas"... As you said "Hats off". It is amazing to see what some peoples are able able to do with almost no ressources. I hope these guys will have a long and interesting career. From a long french viewer. BTW do not change your accent!
“…not too terribly complicated.” Marc’s reply “For you!” Exactly. But I think Marc will be learning SDR soon as much of the original equipment is already incredibly difficult to come by.
As an Australian nerdlinger, I can honestly say that Balint is a national treasure and solely responsible for my spending of silly sums of money on RF gear to the point that my wife will probably leave me!
I've always wanted the math behind radio and television circuits as in the devices made in the 1950s explained. It was also very nice to see Arecibo actually in use before it collapsed.
Just when i didn't think your channel could get any better. Love the s-band series. I have one of those receivers you show with the 2 meters on the front. Sweet.
I really like that little radio. Very good, remarkably easy to use given how much it can do. It’s an SDR too, I believe direct sampling. Nowadays, HF = baseband… Also very good noise suppression.
I just love this series of Apollo videos. It can be hard going even for an Engineer like me but it's really worth it. You really have to be a geek/amateur/enthusiast/engineer to understand the joy those two guys must have had when the probe accepted their commands.
Nice to see “Amateur” Radio Operators doing Archeological Engineering for NASA using Modern SDR Technology. Where there any Vacuum Tubes in the Apollo Telemetry Hardware? As an Amateur Extra and Retired Air Force Flight Systems Engineer, I hope I am still an Active Ham when we have a Broadband Repeater based on the Moon. It would be above the horizon 12 hours each day! 👏 Enjoyed watching this Apollo and NASA Comet Satellite Comm Projects! Video!
WOW! That was a great trip back in time. Now I know why the audio on the space program was as....clear..? as it was back in the day. That's a whole lot of old school tech to get the job done. The only thing missing was a piece of coke and a cats-whisker :-) Thanks for taking us along. Cheers Pete'.
You really can do pretty much anything, demodulate to pretty much any format, and with the right frequency multipliers/dividers to stay within the range of your SDR box you can act across pretty much the entire radio and microwave spectrum. Compared to having totally different circuitry to handle different bands and modulation schemes… it’s quite intense
Such fascinating work and amazing to see how miniaturisation and digitisation has changed and simplified electronics in terms of applied engineering. Thanks for sharing. 🌏📡 🚀👨🏻🚀
I remember when i first found this channel and was like: yeah maybe they can find real space hardware. Few years later, they are sending voice on Apollo hardware!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I've actually just started playing with cheap Sdr to decode aircraft ADSB data but man, what you guys are doing is out of this world! Best chanel on YT!!
SDR is a magical thing for example its enabled the ld-decode & vhs-decode project for VHS/S-VHS/Umatic/Laserdisk 1:1 RF duplicates of the media and then full demodulation and time base correction all in software instead of inflated broadcast hardware anyone with a half-decent VCR and an Linux install and a spare 30USD can do archival restoration granted at 2fps..
To me just receiving and decoding local police using cheapest 10$ usb SDR stick and free dsd+ software was like HOLY COW THAT'S IMPRESSIVE! But what that guy did is outstanding... He is definitely on God's level in SDR-related stuff.
As a non Technical or scientific person I would say 80% of the work you guys do is soooo way over my head you might as well be talking in a different language ( oh yea .. you are !! Lol) But the way you guys break things down and explain the things your doing to us mear mortals we have a SLIGHT understanding of what your talking about BUt DAM I can't stop watching you guys !!!!!! LOVE IT !! CANT WAIT FOR MORE !!
Marc really has a knack for making very complex subjects ( and believe me this is) very accessible to non-technical viewers but still fascinating for those of us who have the technical background.
Modern FM (Band 2) and DAB (Digital Audio Broadcasting Band 3) are also based on SDR radio. True analogue radios are hard to find today. The last generation was already an analogue radio on a hybrit IC. But even these are hard to find today.
The part they didn't mention in this video was that the ISEE-3 project ultimately failed, because they couldn't get the thrusters to fire. Most likely it was either out of fuel, or the plumbing had issues.
@@CuriousMarc Interesting. I guess I never saw the full post-mortem on what happened, beyond some articles about the team talking with various experts on hydrazine after the burn didn't go as planned.. I was mostly referring to the overall project to assume control of ISEE-3, which depended on a burn to change its orbit.
@@derekkonigsberg2047 Yes in that sense you are correct, they were not able to recapture the satellite in earth orbit. But the S-Band SDR part that we are interested in here, that sure worked!
@Maxxarcade It has solar panels so it can keep going on. 14 out of 15 instruments or something like that were still working, so they got scientific data from it for a while. However, as @Derek Koenigsberg pointed out, although they were able to spin-up and reorient the satellite for the burn, they did not get enough Delta-V from the thrusters. So the orbit was not changed sufficiently for recapture. The whole thing continued on its merry way in a modified orbit around the sun, and they eventually lost contact.
I'm so happy to see you working with Balint! He's done so much for the SDR community over the years. If you'd like to help his family, he's running a donation for Rett Syndrome. I'm sure raising awareness of Rett Syndrome would mean a lot to him and his family.
Yes, and that’s why we wore the masks, to protect his immuno-deficient daughter.
It’s not some TED talk or Nobel prize, but getting to be featured on Marcs channel is the achievement people will aim for! 👏🏻
Marcs is more authentic ane genuine than Teds....
@@User0000000000000004 i think, based on your rather well written comment, you may be too smart for a ted talk... lol
There’s a little inside joke in the GNU Radio community. Inside GNU Radio Companion, you can turn on a display of your flowgraph complexity. The units are in “ubal”, which is short for “micro-Balints”. Because Balint was (and clearly still is!) famous for his very complex flowgraphs!
This is true, Balint told us he had the unit of flowgraph complexity named after him!
Such a fascinating journey. Thank you for sharing it!
Well that's an idea, run some sounds in our Apollo system and record how it comes out... The uplink data should sound quite interesting, as it is in the audio band. Then let Hainbach do his magic ;-)
@@CuriousMarc absolutely up for that collab!
This was just amazing! It really puts into perspective the difference between the older tech and new things like SDR, which in turn shows just how incredibly advanced the Apollo equipment was, to be able to do what it did back in the 60s.
This channel is just a showcase of the most impressive humans earth has on it at present. I am floored perpetually.
"how old was the spacecraft?" "i think it was launched in 1978, so pretty old".. thanks guys.. I was launched in 1973.. i feel older than pretty old right now.. amazing video, as always
Youngster
1973 ?? I was in junior high already! Totally engrossed in Space flight, NASA etc.. My uncle gave me a "home study course" on electronics complete with parts to make the labs. Vacuum tube voltmeter anyone?
I was launched 6 months before Sputnik.
'78 is old for a spacecraft. For comparison, the Apple ][ was only a year old, and the IBM PC would only appear 3 years later. Computer and space technology is basically still in it's infancy
@@the123king Apple IIe was my first computer. $2500 for the computer, monitor, two disk drives and a dot matrix printer. Infocom anyone?
Something amusing about just going down to Arecibo and plugging a laptop into a 1000 ft dish.
A laptop AND a circuit board about the size of your hand.
It's like something you see in a SciFi movie and you go "no way that would work in the real world" :-)
When Marc first talked about the satellite my first thought was "OMG some nerds went rogue and used Linux to tell an ancient satellite to fire its thrusters!" Which is exactly what happened but they got permission first. I'd love to hear what an old Nasa Engineer thinks about the small book sized SDR doing the same work as the room full of old hardware. Amazing to think about.
Brilliant. I can't imagine what it felt like waking ISEE-3 up from its slumber using Arecibo no less.
Guys….
No words. I envy you the toys and fun and profoundly admire your work.
Many many thanks for allowing me to share. I am 73 years old but still conversant with today’s tech so I understand the scope of the challenge you set yourself.
Hats humbly iff and greetings from Argentina
My brain hurts but in a good way! Never ceases to amaze me how you collaboratively pull together brilliant people in participate in your amazing projects. You all are literally on another planet! 👍
Kudos to Mr Fancy Pants Marc pulling this all together and equally to those who have participated. I personally take less than 1nS to hit the play video button when your downloads appears, makes my day! Thank you all...
I really like that analog computer reference, never thought of a radio in such a way.
As someone that works with modern radio equipment I was having a good time watching 100s of pounds of 1970s analog gear going to work! But SDRs are really cool also! Keep up the good work love this channel
This series is so good, and there is so much info here presented in the perfect format, for me at least. I'm on my second time through - and I expect will come back to some sections - thanks to everyone involved in this.
Videos like this really humble me. I'm not a dumb man by any means. But these guys are on a different level. The engineers that originally designed this hardware are on another planet.
That was fantastic! Shows how much the technology advanced but also how pretty advanced they were back then despite the bulky equipment they had. The beauty of it all is that the space program made it possible that we have this SDR and other technology now. Kudos to them and to the team that is "re-doing" all that.
This video just blew me away. It was my introduction to SDR. To see such a new technology used in a novel way is fabulous, congratulations!
Cool topic. Love your channel!
..and some people here loves yours!!! hats sir!
This series has become my second favorite (the top one remains your restoration of the AGC), really cool how so many smart people are pitching in their expertise to make this project happen.
Also RIP Arecibo :(
OMG, thank you very for ISEE-3.
I remember giving for the initiative, but I didn't really followed up on it. I didn't realized how awesome, and adventure it was.
Just part about puting your own hardware in the Arecibo Dome, was awesome.
Great content as always, thanks!
I remember donating to their project back in the day. Both guys are certified 'steely eyed missile men' in my book ;)
the sheer contrast of the giant analog heap of electronics and the laptop connected to a circuit board is just something else.
I never enjoy being so out of my depth, as I do when watching your Videos. As a child of the Space Race era, this stuff just delights me. Thank you so much.
This S-band stuff is so cool. I used to tinker back when satellite TV was still using some of that equipment. I don't know why, but it's very satisfying capturing signals from space.
I really got interested in this stuff back in the late 70s when our high school had a guy from NASA show up to do a presentation with a bunch of telemetry equipment which he demonstrated. Most of the kids were unimpressed but I was on the edge of my seat! He even demonstrated some of the spacecraft sensors and I remember being blown away by what they could do.
My fav parts of the hobbies and an healthy Apollo obsession have come together. Heaven.
Spectacular. Brilliant. Stunning. Epic! I'm running out of superlatives. This is absolutely pure genius. Real science!
This is such a joyous video! Thank you and thanks for the reminder about ISEE-3. RIP Arecibo though :(
RIP Arecibo, you are dearly missed and immortal in memory.
Boy those engineers back then were geniuses !! I knew as a kid in the 1970's they did something like this but I didn't understand how until today!
Banks and banks of humming machinery, as they say, and a couple of teeny tiny little new boxes. I loved that!
Stop doing such incredible videos, people are just blown away here.
This series just keeps getting better and better.
You always seem to be able to get the best minds together to work on issues, the ISEE-3 reboot was incredible.
This video encouraged me to install Gnuradio and starting playing. I have an rtl sdr and the next purchase is a sdr transmitter alongside all the other ham gear!
Very interesting subject, and awesome work of the sdr guys. Is there link to a video of their project?
Here is the video of their talk: th-cam.com/video/NTljlMH-0oM/w-d-xo.html
Comme vous l'avez dit "Chapeau bas"... As you said "Hats off". It is amazing to see what some peoples are able able to do with almost no ressources. I hope these guys will have a long and interesting career. From a long french viewer. BTW do not change your accent!
The SDR programming application reminds me a lot of Simulink. Once again, this journey never ceases to amaze.
“…not too terribly complicated.” Marc’s reply “For you!” Exactly. But I think Marc will be learning SDR soon as much of the original equipment is already incredibly difficult to come by.
I will forever be in awe of the black magic stuff that was done during the 60s and 70s
As an Australian nerdlinger, I can honestly say that Balint is a national treasure and solely responsible for my spending of silly sums of money on RF gear to the point that my wife will probably leave me!
Buy an electrical guitar and a big amp while your at it. She screams for you instead of at you. 👍
All of your brains are the size of planets! Amazing what you have figured out.
This is starting to get very interesting! It's so cool that they used Arecibo and an SDR to revive an old satellite!
It is absolutely incredible that we have gone from a giant box to a single chip that is programmable, live no less, in 50 years for radio.
What an amazing video Marc, and what clever guys with the SPR knowledge. Simply awesome!
Balint and Austin - Fantastic achievement. Congratulations
I've always wanted the math behind radio and television circuits as in the devices made in the 1950s explained.
It was also very nice to see Arecibo actually in use before it collapsed.
Epic, and totally made by "I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that"
I was thinking they would go a Huston Apollo call but this was probably better :-)
Just when i didn't think your channel could get any better. Love the s-band series. I have one of those receivers you show with the 2 meters on the front. Sweet.
"This gets a bit complicated." There's an understatement!
Ca fait plaisir de voir du Icom (mon père à bossé pendant 30 ans pour Icom France, et moi aussi les étés) !
I really like that little radio. Very good, remarkably easy to use given how much it can do. It’s an SDR too, I believe direct sampling. Nowadays, HF = baseband… Also very good noise suppression.
What I've just watched was fantastic - a superb bit of engineering. Excellent episode, can't wait for the next one!
That Keysight SA looks amazing, guess it should do for £200,000 !
Balint is an Hungarian name, and i'm so proud, watching these guys.
What a wonderful journey with such great people working on it for so long!
fantastic! I love Balint Seeber, it is my dream to one day see him talk live
This is one of the absolute coolest series on TH-cam. Thank you!
The young interfacing with the old. Cool!
I find it difficult to craft phrases which convey my level of amazement, so I’m going with “Wow. Just WOW 😮!”
Amazing video. Thoroughly entertaining and very educational.
Excellent. Well done Marc and everyone.
I just love this series of Apollo videos. It can be hard going even for an Engineer like me but it's really worth it. You really have to be a geek/amateur/enthusiast/engineer to understand the joy those two guys must have had when the probe accepted their commands.
after this video I felt light years behind you guys, congrtulations!
Nice to see “Amateur” Radio Operators doing Archeological Engineering for NASA using Modern SDR Technology. Where there any Vacuum Tubes in the Apollo Telemetry Hardware? As an Amateur Extra and Retired Air Force Flight Systems Engineer, I hope I am still an Active Ham when we have a Broadband Repeater based on the Moon. It would be above the horizon 12 hours each day! 👏 Enjoyed watching this Apollo and NASA Comet Satellite Comm Projects! Video!
WOW! That was a great trip back in time. Now I know why the audio on the space program was as....clear..? as it was back in the day. That's a whole lot of old school tech to get the job done. The only thing missing was a piece of coke and a cats-whisker :-)
Thanks for taking us along.
Cheers
Pete'.
Makes me want to get into SDR. Seems almost limitless in what you can do with it! Very cool!
You really can do pretty much anything, demodulate to pretty much any format, and with the right frequency multipliers/dividers to stay within the range of your SDR box you can act across pretty much the entire radio and microwave spectrum. Compared to having totally different circuitry to handle different bands and modulation schemes… it’s quite intense
"I'm still interested... I can't find my own signal, sometimes, between these walls..."
You guys are amazing!! Your knowledge and persistence is inspiring. Keep up the good work.
Such fascinating work and amazing to see how miniaturisation and digitisation has changed and simplified electronics in terms of applied engineering.
Thanks for sharing. 🌏📡 🚀👨🏻🚀
Extremely cool! Brilliant, waking up an old satellite wow. And Voice over a hybrid Apollo S-Band transceiver coupled with very modern SDR. Smashing :)
PERFECT TIMING!! I am at present learning about SDR! As always, this channel is amazing!!!
I was waiting for an italian station to come in declaring QRP
I remember when i first found this channel and was like: yeah maybe they can find real space hardware. Few years later, they are sending voice on Apollo hardware!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I've actually just started playing with cheap Sdr to decode aircraft ADSB data but man, what you guys are doing is out of this world! Best chanel on YT!!
Very exciting to see you guys with Balint joining the rf party !
This is so good. Honestly, these videos are a gift.
Absolutely fascinating from start to end, great episode Marc
Totally in awe of you guys. Loving this series!
Best video on TH-cam, hands down
SDR is a magical thing for example its enabled the ld-decode & vhs-decode project for VHS/S-VHS/Umatic/Laserdisk 1:1 RF duplicates of the media and then full demodulation and time base correction all in software instead of inflated broadcast hardware anyone with a half-decent VCR and an Linux install and a spare 30USD can do archival restoration granted at 2fps..
love everything about this. keep up the good work.
Kind of just adds to the sadness about Aracebo going away.
To me just receiving and decoding local police using cheapest 10$ usb SDR stick and free dsd+ software was like HOLY COW THAT'S IMPRESSIVE!
But what that guy did is outstanding... He is definitely on God's level in SDR-related stuff.
As a non Technical or scientific person I would say 80% of the work you guys do is soooo way over my head you might as well be talking in a different language ( oh yea .. you are !! Lol)
But the way you guys break things down and explain the things your doing to us mear mortals we have a SLIGHT understanding of what your talking about
BUt DAM I can't stop watching you guys !!!!!!
LOVE IT !! CANT WAIT FOR MORE !!
Marc really has a knack for making very complex subjects ( and believe me this is) very accessible to non-technical viewers but still fascinating for those of us who have the technical background.
Great elevator music training sessions. I learn a lot from them. Looking forward to decoding the telemetry.
I wish I understood something so complicated so well ! great work...cheers.
You guys should call “mr carlsons lab” channel. The man can de-solder an old wax capacitor in 7 secs flat from a quarter mile away.
The A-Team is getting bigger still! Pretty cool episode.
Mind blown….. superb result…..
Modern FM (Band 2) and DAB (Digital Audio Broadcasting Band 3) are also based on SDR radio.
True analogue radios are hard to find today. The last generation was already an analogue radio on a hybrit IC. But even these are hard to find today.
That was, once again, one of the coolest things I've ever seen.
Apollo Comms Part 2001: Locking onto Marc in his replica Apollo module in orbit around the moon
Can't wait to see how far you can take it :D
Nice HAL2000 reference
Oooh boy that’s quite the gnuradio flowgraph 💀
What a great couple of guys - that was fascinating!
So that ISEE-3 is still functional after all these decades? How does it still have/store power?
The part they didn't mention in this video was that the ISEE-3 project ultimately failed, because they couldn't get the thrusters to fire. Most likely it was either out of fuel, or the plumbing had issues.
No, the thrusters did fire, but no long enough. They had enough fuel, but ran out of nitrogen pressure. The SDR project was a success, not a failure.
@@CuriousMarc Interesting. I guess I never saw the full post-mortem on what happened, beyond some articles about the team talking with various experts on hydrazine after the burn didn't go as planned.. I was mostly referring to the overall project to assume control of ISEE-3, which depended on a burn to change its orbit.
@@derekkonigsberg2047 Yes in that sense you are correct, they were not able to recapture the satellite in earth orbit. But the S-Band SDR part that we are interested in here, that sure worked!
@Maxxarcade It has solar panels so it can keep going on. 14 out of 15 instruments or something like that were still working, so they got scientific data from it for a while. However, as @Derek Koenigsberg pointed out, although they were able to spin-up and reorient the satellite for the burn, they did not get enough Delta-V from the thrusters. So the orbit was not changed sufficiently for recapture. The whole thing continued on its merry way in a modified orbit around the sun, and they eventually lost contact.
Holy sh*t. Electronics and RF Champions League meetup...
I hate that only 100k people know about this.... this content is so cool.
We need these guys when V’ger shows up.
Nice work!
When will you hook up the Apollo RF HW to Mikes AGC emulation?
Watching this while decoding NWS weather fax at 4316kHz using a $170 SDR and some free software.