Rocketry Planet

BELLEVUE, Washington USA — GPSFlight, the leader in high-performance, miniature wireless GPS telemetry, is pleased to announce the delivery of the ST900, the next generation long range telemetry transmitter.

The ST900 delivers new levels of performance and greater system integration capabilities than other devices in its class. The ST900 has been designed to deliver faster satellite lock times, excellent performance in deep foliage, and is even able to maintain GPS lock indoors in many buildings.

GPSFlight's new ST900 transmitter.

The ST900 telemetry transmitter features include:

• Small form factor 75mm x 52mm x 20mm for a multitude of mounting options
• 50 Channel WAAS GPS with fast first time to fix generally less than 29 seconds
• -160 db GPS sensitivity for indoor coverage (in many cases)
• Long battery life - runs more the 12 hours on 4 AA batteries
• Input Voltage from 4VDC to 12VDC
• Integrated 17 bit temperature compensated digital altimeter
• Programming wizard software simplifies field firmware updates, and programming of large groups of units

GPSFlight customer John McAtee, uses the ST900 to track experimental sounding rocket flights in order to see real-time performance while the vehicle is in flight, and to aid in recovery. John was one of the first to use the ST900 for such a difficult tracking task. "This thing rocks!" says John. "The ST900 outperformed my expectations, providing real-time data on a rocket flight subject to high G-forces."

Craig Kairis, CEO of GPSFlight, was extremely pleased with the ST900's performance in this dynamic test, which Mr. Kairis says is much more extreme than most customers. "We spent lots of time talking to our customers about what they needed in this next generation transmitter" says Mr. Kairis. "Using cutting edge components such as the uBlox 5 chipset enables low power, but very high performance GPS tracking, and this combined with our CPU creates delivers incredible performance in such a small, yet reliable and inexpensive package."

About GPSFlight:
GPSFlight advanced telemetry provides the most cost effective, long range GPS tracking solution available in the market today. The company develops and manufactures telemetry hardware and software that delivers a complete communication solution allowing customer to ealisly set up a license-free wireless network without the need and cost of cellular or satellite communications.

GPSFlight technology is used worldwide to track assets, people, vehicles, planes, and even icebergs near the Arctic Circle to help measure the affect of climate change. GPSFlight utilizes 902 to 928 unlicensed frequencies which allow more flexible tracking at a fraction of the cost of cellular or satellite. GPSFlight customers include commercial, military, and recreational companies worldwide. For more information please visit http://www.gpsflight.com/.

Contact:
Craig Kairis
CEO
425-653-2477
Email: This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it  

Reader comments:

#1 Re: GPSFlight announces the ST900 transmitter

I have been talking with these guys for a little while. They have an awesome product - at least from what I have seen on paper. They claim that if properly padded against vibration the unit can maintain a lock on GPS in very high G accelerations. If I recall it was up to 20G with a bubble wrap style vibration dampener.

UncleVanya on 05-18-2008 11:32 PM

#2 Re: GPSFlight announces the ST900 transmitter

Our club bought one of the early GPS Flight models on my recommendation. Lately, it works very well in my living room, but never gets a GPS lock when I power it up at our launch site, 45 miles away, even if I leave it on for a long time.

It did the very first time, and it was fascinating to watch the telemetry during the flight; there is a readout for velocity and position during flight. One of these days I'll get around to figuring it out. I feel like it is a very well made product, but right now nobody in my club has confidence in it. In fairness to GPSFlight, I never have complained to them. They might have a simple suggestion; it probably is an operator error.

Steve_Shannon on 05-20-2008 05:39 PM

#3 Re: GPSFlight announces the ST900 transmitter

I had the original unit and I now have the ST900. I was able to make the original work most of the time, including some high altitude, many-G flights. The ST900 is even better. I've only flown it once so far, but it performs very well. Can't wait to try it on an agressive flight.

Jim

JimJarvis50 on 05-20-2008 08:58 PM

#4 Re: GPSFlight announces the ST900 transmitter

Quote:

I had the original unit and I now have the ST900. I was able to make the original work most of the time, including some high altitude, many-G flights. The ST900 is even better. I've only flown it once so far, but it performs very well. Can't wait to try it on an aggressive flight.
Jim

Let the record show that Jim had his frustrations with the 'old' version. GPSFlight worked with him and made sure his unit was working correctly. Once Jim re-packaged the 'in-rocket' part of the system, it worked well. Like he said, the newer version is even better!

Stu

StuBarrett on 05-20-2008 10:47 PM

#5 Re: GPSFlight announces the ST900 transmitter

That's encouraging. I need to get off my butt and contact GPSFlight.

Steve_Shannon on 05-20-2008 11:09 PM

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