Category: Software
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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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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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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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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…
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Working with the WIFI module
The Arctic Tracker lab model has a main microcontroller unit (Teensy 3) and a ESP-12 WIFI module. Now, can we connect the tracker to a PC or to the internet (using WIFI) and can we make a web interface to configure the tracker? Yes, it seems like we can. It can connect to the internet,…
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The quest for open software for the ADF4351
It seems the ADF4350/ADF4351 is a versatile little RF synthesizer, ranging from low VHF to well into the microwave spectrum. The are quite a few articles describing projects using the ADF4350 or ADF4351, and a few that publish firmware files for diverse MCUs that can control the synthesizer, but no I haven’t been able to locate…
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Designing a lab model
The Arctic Tracker project is not dead (yet). The idea is to develop a tracker device with traits like these: It is modular, it can be assembled mainly from existing modules. Should be fairly easy to assemble. It has plenty of computing room and is open source. It can be a platform for hacking and…
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Receiving APRS packets
Receiving and decoding of APRS packets is now implemented and it seems to work. It is more tricky than sending packets but there are a fair amount of examples to look at. For instance the BeRTOS TNC implementation. Ok, here is how it is done: First, the audio signal from the receiver is fed to…
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Transmitting APRS packets
APRS packet transmission is now tested and it works. It is clear that the SA818 radio module is not usable for this project. The time it takes to key up the transmitter and get a decent modulation running is far too long. In addition it seems to vary and it seems like there is some…
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Using the DAC
Can we use the 12 bit DAC of the Teensy 3.1 to generate AFSK (Audio Frequency Shift Keying) signals? Lets try. First, we try to generate sine waves with frequencies of 1200 or 2200 Hz. If we could quickly toggle between those two frequencies, it would support generating AFSK. The idea is to use a…