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Cellular GPS reporting?

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10:59 am
December 9, 2009


Luke Maurits

Adelaide, Australia

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in light of brmj's post about SparkFun electronics' awesome $100 give away, I've started looking through their <= $100 products to see if there is anything we can use for OHKLA.

This device looks incredibly handy.  It includes a GSM celluar communication engine and a GPS receiver: "Call up the module, issue the GPS query command, and you'll have NMEA data! If this unit is within range of a cellular tower, you'll know where it is within 9 meters anywhere on the surface of the earth".  This might be an excellent way to find out where our rocket lands so we can recover the data.  It would require no communications infrastructure on our part, as long as someone at the launch site has a cell phone on them.

Unfortunately, it costs more than $100, so we couldn't get it free with their promotion, however this device is the exact same cellular communications engine without the GPS built in for $99.95, which we could get, and they have a wide range of GPS devices for less than $100.  I wonder how hard it would be to use two separate devices to reproduce the function of the first?  We would need to ask somebody with some EE knowledge.  This approach would take up a little more space and mass than the one integrated item, but it would save us some money.  Not a lot of money in the grand scheme of things, but we're not exactly rich at the moment.

The only possible issues I can forsee is that we may not be able to attach an antenna to the rocket in a position that ensures good signal and aerodynamics and reentry survivability, and also that if we are launching in a remote desert location for safety there may not be good cellular coverage – I don't know what coverage is like in the US.

Starting a new TA job next week, might be busy for a while! Main CLLARE workgroups: Mission Planning, Navigation and Guidance. I do maths, physics, C, Python and Java.

7:30 am
December 10, 2009


Rocket-To-The-Moon

Grand Forks, North Dakota, USA

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That thing does sound almost perfect, however I don't know if there will be cellular coverage where it will land.

As for antenna positioning, maybe the antenna could be exposed after the rocket separates when the parachute deploys. 

Completely offline from 8-14 March. Main Workgroups: Propulsion & Spacecraft Engineering

8:16 pm
December 11, 2009


brmj

Rochester, New York, United States

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Rocket-To-The-Moon said:

That thing does sound almost perfect, however I don't know if there will be cellular coverage where it will land.


Perhaps we could go with an off the shelf APRS solution, then?

Main work groups: Propulsion (booster), Spacecraft Engineering, Computer Systems, Navigation and Guidance (software)

2:19 am
March 9, 2010


natronics

Portland, OR

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Perhaps I might suggest TeleMetruim?  It's an open source 'flight computer' for small rockets. Not designed to do too much, but it has a altitude logger and most importantly a GPS and a radio that will transmit it's coordinates after landing.  You should be able to buy one, or you could make it yourself. Full hardware plans, a bill of materails and the software is available.

http://www.altusmetrum.org/TeleMetrum/

It has antenna hookups, but we (PSAS) have flown them with the default attached antenna inside the rocket (not a solid metal rocket, however) and still been able to get a signal.

I would expect that the places where you could launch very high altitude rockets will not have cell coverage, as a rule. I would not suggest going down that path.

11:46 pm
March 11, 2010


brmj

Rochester, New York, United States

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Cool! That looks like a very nice piece of hardware, and it would be one more part we don't have to design ourselves.

You say you guys have flown them? I take it they work well in practice, then?

Main work groups: Propulsion (booster), Spacecraft Engineering, Computer Systems, Navigation and Guidance (software)

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