After doing a number of satellite and radio astronomy experiments, I finally got tired of my old briefcase full of tangled radio gear. I dug through my collection of broken computers, old wires, spare parts, and other junk, and assembled an all-in-one space cyberdeck!
This system combines most of my satellite and software-defined-radio gear into one portable platform. The hardware includes:
- Touchscreen computer
- RTL-SDR radio
- Various filter / amp modules
- Various WiFi modules
- Satellite Meter / digital video player
- PTZ control for my older dish pointers
- LNB power injector
- King-Dome / Vuqube control
- Panel-mount port interfaces
Software includes:
- Q4OS (simple, low-resource Linux)
- GQRX (standard SDR software)
- Gpredict for satellite tracking
- GOEStools, WXtoIMG, etc for weather satellites
The system is fairly modular and expandable, with most major components simply stuck in with velcro tape. If I want to swap modules for a different experiment, I can just pop them out and replace with something else.
Some of the parts I used include:
- Datalux Tracer computer (found for $ at a police auction).
- RTL-SDR Blog v3 ()
- Wideband LNA ()
- Talentcell 12v 6Ah battery pack ()
- Snpurdiri 60% keyboard ()
- AC600 Wifi adapter ()
- GTMedia v8 Satellite Meter ()
- Old Dell PCMCIA wifi card
- Old Broadcom Mini-PCI wifi card
- King-Dome remote
(None of these were sponsored products and I bought all of this myself)
I’m planning to do a variety of projects and experiments with this system and my various 2nd-hand satellite antennas in the future. Stay tuned to see what I come up with!
*Please note that my use of the term “hacking“ refers to using hardware and software for unintended or experimental purposes, not anything unauthorized! I am not breaking, pirating, or transmitting anything. I’m simply poking around at old satellite hardware to see what can be freely and legally done with it!
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