Setting up your dish for QO-100 is always a fun challenge, especially if you are using it for the Wide Band transponder on QO-100. Larger dishes are more difficult to fine tune. I’ve been thinking about building the functionality into the Android Longmynd Client, but there is still a bit more work to be done there, so when Robert DD4YR requested something similar for tests that he wants to do with various lenses on his dish I decided to do a little side application to display the live MER and also keep a running average of the last 200 points (about 30 seconds worth of data). This uses a modified longmynd as used by the longmynd client. More details here.
The application was hacked together using Flutter. Because the app is fairly simple and made using Flutter it can essentially be compiled for Android, IOS, Windows, Linux and even MacOS. I’ve got compiled binaries for Android and Windows available to download, but the source code is also available if you want to compile for other platforms.
To use this application setup the connection details of where your Longmynd is running. The application uses a websocket connection to get the information from Longmynd so use the full url as follow:
ws://<longmyndip>:<longmynd ws port>
In my case this translates to ws://192.168.0.178:8080
If it connects succesfully then you should be receiving the current MER values with a little graph of the average MER. It will also show whether a signal has been locked and what the current frequency is. Use your longmynd client to change the frequency to the QO-100 beacon and now you can sit on the roof with the mobile application and get immediate feedback when adjusting your dish.
Since the code is all available you can freely modify it to your needs. (Pull Requests welcome!)
Downloads
If you use and enjoy my software and would like to support future projects, then you can buy me a beer or if you prefer donate via Paypal.
2022/07/17:
Android APK
Windows Executable
Source Code
Have fun and be sure to let me know how you are using this 🙂