Hi All, I’m happy to have a new public version available for OpenTuner. This version had a focus on improving various stability and performance issues while adding some quality of life features. This doesn’t mean its a boring update though with some fun new additions added as well š Apart from the usual bug fixes…
Category: Software
PicoTuner – An Experimental Dual TS Alternative
Colin (G4EML) has recently been working on a great new project. Its a Raspberry Pico USB interface alternative for the FTDI FT2232H module. This module is fairly expensive and difficult to get in some countries so this is a welcome project. This project also supports dual TS reception with the advantage that you only need…
Quansheng UV-K5/K6/5R Experiments : Flashing Custom Firmware
What is this ? The Quansheng UV-K5 and all its current variants is a radio very similar in the line of the various Chinese made radio series available on the market. While there is various controversy about the availability and usage of these radios (even in South Africa) there is something to be said about…
In The Shack – 2024 – Week 3
Hi Everybody, I tend to usually only post if I have a new version of software ready for testing, or completed a specific project. Unfortunately this leads to long times before posts and then I get emails asking whether I’m still alive :p I’ve decided to start a weekly post or so just chatting about…
Adventures with GreenCube Satellite
Introduction GreenCube is a new satellite that was designed by S5Lab and there are lots of interesting parts to this one. Most amateur radio satellites we usually play with is in Leo orbit, meaning its only a couple hundred kilometers away. The Greencube satellite is in Meo orbit with a distance of 5800+ km. This…
QO100 DATV Decoding with SDRangel and SDR
Introduction SDRangel recently had an update (v7.8.1) with a couple of enhancements and fixes. One of the updates was an addition of adding a dial to flip through DATV standard symbol rates. It’s not a big change, but it has inspired me to download it and try to decode some DATV transmissions from QO-100. Being…
QO-100 High Speed Modem and Weather Station
Overview If you have been active on QO-100 then you would by now know about the High Speed Multi Media Beacon. The beacon sends high speed data within the maximum allowed bandwidth of 2.7 kHz. I’ve previously done a post on development information as well as some tips and tricks to get it going on…
Adding Satellite Tracking to Portable Rotator
In the last post about my Portable Rotator for satellite use we got the basics working, we had a system where can send a command to set the Azimuth and Elevation by sending the following command: By sending those commands we can move the rotator to an Azimuth of 180 and Elevation of 57. This…
Beginning of Portable Satellite Tracker
When Zane (ZS5ZT) contacted me and offered me a heavy duty pan/title mechanism I jumped at the offer. Turns out it is a nice little gadget and Iām surprised that not more people have turned these into portable trackers. I have created a page documenting my build and experiments with it. The first information is…
QO-100 High Speed Modem – Info/Tips/Development
The QO-100 High Speed Modem is a very exciting development from Amsat-DL and DJ0ABR. The modem itself allows for sending all kinds of different data including files, images and even experimental voice. The QO-100 Narrowband Transponder has a multimedia beacon currently running where you can receive and decode lots of interesting information using the High…