Antitronics
Hack, Make, Teach
Radio and Rocketry and Open Source. Awesome.
Author: sconklin19 Apr
The Altus Metrum TeleDongle
Bdale Garbee and Keith Packard are both longtime Debian Developers, and have a pile of code to their credit. They’ve presented at a number of conferences and almost always find a way to work their passion for rocketry into their presentations. They are both amateur radio operators.
At the Linux Collaborative Summit last week, I had a chance to talk with them, and the topic drifted quickly to Rocketry and Amateur Radio, and the intersection of those interests. They’ve created the TeleMetrum telemetry system, available soon from their Altus Metrum site. This is an amazing platform that has applications beyond rocketry – a GPS, accelerometer, and altimeter with a telemetry link in the 70cm amateur band. it’s all open hardware and open software.
They’re about to open shop and start selling these, and I know it’s going to be a big deal for a lot of people in Rocketry. I can also see uses for high altitude balloon launches.
I’m not into rocketry any more, and there’s no room in my hobby load for that, but I was really interested in the programmable radio chip that they are using. The same chip is used on both the rocket and for the ground station, and the ground station unit is available as the TeleDongle. The TeleDongle is a complete radio system with 10mW output on the 70 cm band, powered from a USB port. As supplied, it has code installed from Keith which makes it a virtual 38k4 serial link. With different output filter values, the chip can function over a wide range of frequencies, but it’s only certified in certain bands. I’m still digesting the data sheet, but there’s an amazing amount of functionality on the chip.
Happily, I was able to order a couple of the TeleDongles from Bdale, and I got notice today that he has shipped them. They’re set up so that you can use one as a USB adapter to program the other, making experimentation easier. I’m looking forward to experimenting with these. I’ll post the results!
4 Responses for "Radio and Rocketry and Open Source. Awesome."
hey, we’re getting ready for a high altitude balloon launch over at Makers Local. This sounds like it would be cool for our tracking system solution!
Do you know how much these cost?
Part of the high altitude balloon competition is that we have to spend under a certain amount, I’m hoping that these are within budget!
$350 for the telemetry unit. The store is open now: http://auric.gag.com/ and Bdale said that he’s hoping to have the Telemetrum units for sale soon.
Here’s his blog post about it: http://www.gag.com/bdale/blog/
It would be ideal for balloon launches. It also has an uplink capability that can turn on two FET switches. These are used for firing ejection charges, etc in rockets, but they could be used for anything.
You may need to hack the code to use them that way, Bdale explained to me that the on-board processor tracks different phases of flight using the sensors, so you can’t (for example) fire the ejection charge during boost.
If you have your own sensor package, the telemetrum boards might give you a cheap, easy radio link.
I chatted with Bdale and Keith a bit about other uses like balloon launch, and they have been very helpful to me in my initial poking around with the TeleDongle. They’ve set up a mailing list, and that’s probably the best way to make contact to discuss things like this:
http://lists.gag.com/mailman/listinfo/altusmetrum
I chatted with Bdale and Keith a bit about other uses like balloon launch, and they have been very helpful to me in my initial poking around with the TeleDongle. They’ve set up a mailing list, and that’s probably the best way to make contact to discuss things like this:
+1