
Hillbilly Tracking of Low Earth Orbit Satellites  - wmat
http://travisgoodspeed.blogspot.com/2013/07/hillbilly-tracking-of-low-earth-orbit.html
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mmaunder
If you're interested in starting to play with Satellites: Install MacDoppler
and track SO-50. Then get a cheapie VHF/UHF dual band radio that can tune to
436.800 Mhz. You don't need a big antenna, just figure out where the satellite
is from Azimuth and Elevation and point the radio's antenna at the ground so
that it's upside down and perpendicular to a line from you to the satellite
(like you're shooting a snake with a ray gun if the antenna is the ray gun).
Tune up a few Khz as the satellite is coming towards you and down as it is
going away from you to compensate for doppler. You'll hear lots of hams using
the satellite as a repeater.

If you want to talk too, get a Technician ham license which is very easy and
an Arrow II dual band antenna and point it at the bird and chat away. [And
then call me, I'm callsign AD0ER]

There are over 50 amateur satellites that were launched as repeaters, most of
them dead. FO-29, SO-50, AO-07 and a handful of others work. I believe
Turksat-3USAT should enable any day now as a repeater. There's also the ISS.
You can also get telemetry from many other satellites and it's all mostly just
VHF and UHF.

The author of the project should turn the project into a kickstarter to
provide hams with auto-tracking of satellites. I wouldn't even care about
radio integration, just save me having to stand outside with a hand-held yagi
looking like I should be wearing a tinfoil hat. Post something to QRZ.com and
see if there's interest.

~~~
rdl
Speaking of cheap 2m/70cm HTs, I got into ham radio recently due to the
Baofeng UV-5r being $32 on Amazon; got tech/general last week (KG7EPM).
[http://www.amazon.com/BaoFeng-UV-5R-136-174-400-480-Dual-
Ban...](http://www.amazon.com/BaoFeng-UV-5R-136-174-400-480-Dual-
Band/dp/B007H4VT7A/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1374634616&sr=8-1&keywords=baofeng+uv-5r)

~~~
mmaunder
Wow, the equivalent Yaesu is over $180 bucks. Thanks for the tip. I'm
occasionally on 20 meters around 8 to 9pm mountain time around 14.250 +- 20khz
in case you play with HF. Congrats on General!

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WestCoastJustin
Travis Goodspeed makes lots of hardware gadgets [1], he also gave a really
cool talk about "Writing a Thumbdrive from Scratch" (for antiforensics) [2] at
the 29th Chaos Communication Congress [29c3].

[1] [http://goodfet.sourceforge.net/](http://goodfet.sourceforge.net/)

[2]
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8Im0_KUEf8](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8Im0_KUEf8)

~~~
sadfaceunread
[2] in above was a very impressive talk. Mr. Goodspeed appears quite
comfortable on stage, although I think his 'antiforensics' was somewhat less
interesting than the notion of exploiting the fact that so many USB drivers
exist and that flashing device firmware isn't super difficult. Probably a ton
of exploits are possible by building device firmwares that behave unexpectedly
and have not so robust drivers in the OS. Dropping a stack of malicious
thumbdrives with not just evil.exe on them, but actual evil firmware is an
interesting concept.

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th0ma5
I've been having a lot of fun with the RTLSDR... Best $14 dollars I ever spent
several times! The Reddit community is pretty good
[http://reddit.com/r/rtlsdr](http://reddit.com/r/rtlsdr) and you'll find links
to the original project and more in their info section.

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mikemarotti
Travis's talk at Summercon was incredible - I shot the video for it and will
hopefully (with Travis's and Mark's permission, of course) will post it soon!

~~~
owenjones
This project is incredible!

What was the talk on? This is the first I've heard of Travis.

~~~
bvttf
"Portscanning Low Earth Orbit"
[http://www.summercon.org/presentations.html#orbit](http://www.summercon.org/presentations.html#orbit),
lots of overlap with this post, but we also learned how to pronounce
appalachian.

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ceautery
From the same people who invented hidden compartments in cars for running
shine, we have further proof that hillbillies are ingenious. Well done, sir!

~~~
VLM
Excellent project but fails the high tech redneck "hillbilly tracking" title
due to lack of duct tape, no bonfire, no empty beer cans as structural
material, no camo spray paint decoration, didn't see it up on concrete blocks,
no stick welding with slag everywhere, and no baling wire. Still an excellent
project, just not "hillbilly" as per the title; would have been done
identically in downtown Manhattan or at my lab in the frozen north.

~~~
deadfall
Hillbilly is a person that lives in the mountains and not a person that jury
rigs things, per se.

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VLM
I would respectfully disagree and provide the counterexamples of my rural
friends and family in Wisconsin where the tallest mountain in the state is
about 500 feet, and on the other side as a counterexample I present "Colorado"
and "Hawaii"

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kenrikm
That's very impressive. Great job building that, I totally want one now. I'm
curious as to how you identify the different Satellites? is there an API
available that gives the orbits/names?

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jevinskie
I want to find a source of these dishes.

~~~
wmat
Here's the Furuno USA page, you can click on Find a Dealer from there.

[http://bit.ly/162VzYr](http://bit.ly/162VzYr)

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xradionut
I wouldn't call this "Hillbilly Tracking", since it's the roughly same process
many amateur radio and astronomy enthusiasts have been using to track
satellites and other objects. But it is a cool build and hack...

~~~
njharman
Named for its location, Appalachia, not its methodology.

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singular
Really fantastic hack. I love the fact you can interact with a piece of real-
life hardware (and move it, too) from anywhere in the world with your phone,
that adds a sort of emotional-rather-than-logical magic to it :)

~~~
kaybe
As long as all safety and security measures have been taken.. I would hate to
see that broken by some script kiddie.

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deletes
I noticed the mention of Voyager 1 and 2 probes. Are you telling me that dish
can receive ( useful data ) signals from the probes themselves ?!

~~~
alexhawdon
I noticed the same thing. I've read a little about the Voyager probes (what
geek hasn't?) and from my recollection they have to schedule time on some HUGE
radiotelescope array in order to communicate with the Voyagers. But I have
been known to misrecollect...

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deserted
Seeing him tracking satellites made me think of the potential for servo-
controlled directional antennas with common Wi-Fi. Anyone built a tracking
antenna mount using servos? Seems like you would be able to 3D print one that
could point my 400 gram Ubiquiti Nanostation device towards various peers to
make a mesh network of difficult to jam directional links.

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HeyLaughingBoy
Servocity has fairly inexpensive R/C servo-driven pan/tilt mechanisms.

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nos4A2
An N900 <sigh> What a shame Nokia couldn't continue that legacy.. I just can't
seem to find the desire to move on from mine..

~~~
pqs
:'(

Mine is dead. I miss it.

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tdec
Now this is a very decent hack. I always hope to see more of them. Kudos !

