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Fourth round of the tracker project
In the fourth round it was decided to make another version of the VHF tracker, but without the PA module. A smaller (Hammond) enclosure with 3D printed top and bottom. The whole thing got simpler, but we also decided to design a 4-layer PCB and let the factory in China assemble most of it. Exceptions…
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Arctic Tracker software on LilyGo T-TWR plus
Arctic Tracker is both a hardware and a software project. Until now, hardware has mainly aimed to demonstrate how to make trackers from affordable modules, in particular the ESP32, and relatively few discrete electronic components in addition. The ESP32 is a popular and fairly advanced microcontroller. It has been used in several products aimed at…
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Third round of tracker project
Five tracker prototypes have been made in this round. As described in the previous post, this third version is based on the ESP32-S3, it has a USB-C socket and a OLED display on the outside of the enclosure, with a 3D-printed cover. Display The first idea was to replace the Nokia LCD display with a…
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Running Polaric Server on Ulari
The “Polaric Server” is mainly a web based service to present live APRS tracking information on maps and where the information is updated in realtime. It is originally targeted for use by radio amateurs in voluntary search and rescue service in Norway. It consists of a web application and a server program (APRS daemon). It…
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Arctic Tracker – what now?
The Arctic Tracker was an attempt to create an advanced APRS tracker with modules, and in particular with a Wifi-module, that can be constructed by hand be amateurs. It has proven to work though there have been some issues. Now there is also a work going on with developing a Polaric Tracker 2 in the…
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Improving trails with Arctic Tracker
Earlier we have tested a scheme for improving trails by piggybacking an extra position report in the comment field of APRS position reports. It could either be a compressed form of the previous report or an extra report that would otherwise not be sent. This can be helpful e.g. when changing direction. A improved scheme…
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Second round of tracker project
The second iteration of the Arctic Tracker is based on an ESP-32 IoT module (a sucessor of the ESP8266). It is quite capable and still rather cheap. It has Wifi, Bluetooth, a dual core CPU operating at up to 240 MHz, 520 KiB RAM, and several other interesting features. We use a ESP-Wroom-32 module with…
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First round of tracker project
The Arctic Tracker project isnt dead. It has just been “resting” for a while (sorry, we have been busy with many things). However, a second version is underway, based on the ESP-32 module and experiences from the first round. I will describe this in the next post. It is some time ago now, but here…
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Designing a prototype tracker
We have been working for some time, designing a more complete prototype Arctic Tracker. The plan is to produce up to 10 units, with financial support from the Norwegian Radio Relay League. We will use a Tekal 12.30 aluminum enclosure (like the Polaric Tracker), it will have a display, and a PA module that can…
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Tracking, internet and igate
I have been busy hacking the tracker. Now it can connect to a server on the internet, it can function as an igate or digipeater and it tracks positions nicely. Tracking is quite like the Polaric Tracker. Every 10 second it checks the position (from the GPS module) and depending on the speed, distance between…