Rocketry Planet

MARYSVILLE, Washington USA — A new GPS offering from Tragic Little Aerospace allows you to track your rocket from launch to landing with a unit that weighs less than a 9V battery, including the antenna, and is small enough to fit into a 38mm airframe tube with room to space.

The Micro GPS unit's receiver plugs into your laptop computer via a USB port and will allow you to record your flight's data as well as viewing the events in real time. And, finding your rocket is easy, simply by entering the last position into your hand-held GPS unit and walk right to it.

SLIDESHOW: µGTU with antenna - squares are 1/4" inch.

µGTU with antenna - squares are 1/4" inch.

Best of all, you don not need any kind of license to use it and the unit is less than $300.

A high performance 50-channel ublox 5 technology chip and a quadrifilar helix antenna powers a 32-channel engine with over one million effective correlators that are capable of massive parallel searches across the time/frequency space. This enables rapid Time To First Fix (TTFF) capability while long correlation/dwell times make possible the best-in-class acquisition and tracking sensitivity.   

The Micro GPS, connected to a compact 100mW 900MHz Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum (FHSS) transceiver with 25 frequencies and 7 hop sequences has 65,000 unique addresses for each channel to guarantee no interference from other units. Outdoor RF line-of-sight range of the unit is up to 6 miles (9.6 km) with the included dipole antennas.   

The transmitter itself runs on 5V to 15V, so you can expect over an hour of telemetry from a fresh 9V battery. 7.4V lithium batteries can also be used with proper current limiting.  
     
Specifications:

• Frequency Band: 910 - 918 MHz
• Spread spectrum type: FHSS (Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum)
• Supported network topologies: Peer-to-peer, point-to-point point-to-multipoint
• Error handling: Retries & acknowledgements
• Filtration options: VID (Vendor ID Number), channels and addressing
• Channel capacity: 7 hop sequences share 25 frequencies
• Addressing: 65,000 network addresses available for each channel
• Power output: 100 mW (20 dBm)
• Outdoor/RF line-of-sight range: up to 15 miles (24 km)

Tragic Little Aerospace was started in 2009 by four rocketeers from western Washingtom State who enjoy doing electronics projects on the side. While Tragic Little Aerospace does not have a physical store front, you can contact then at the number listed below if you have any questions, or using the email address listed below or on their website. The Micro GPS unit and radio receiver used are FCC cleared, and the electrions are custom designed to bring those two devices together in a way that doesn't require a license to operate.

Tragic Little Aerospace is made up of Robert Geer, Alex Dumas, Dustin Knie, and Nathan Shelby.

Contact Information:
Tragic Little Aerospace
Nathan Shelby
Email: This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it
Phone: 425-205-9047
Website: http://www.tragiclittleaerospace.com/

Reader comments:

#1 Re: Article: Tragic Little Aerospace offering Micro GPS telemetry unit

Wow, these are going to be popular. Is the receiver included in the less-than-$300 price?

Adrian A on 08-09-2010 11:45 PM

#2 Re: Article: Tragic Little Aerospace offering Micro GPS telemetry unit

This thing looks to be pretty impressive... Like Adrian, I'm curious about the receiver. Is that all there is for an antenna? (see photo in article).

Wow... pretty cool

3DogsRocketry on 08-09-2010 11:53 PM

#3 Re: Article: Tragic Little Aerospace offering Micro GPS telemetry unit

Quote:

Is the receiver included in the less-than-$300 price?

Looks like it uses the XBee Pro 900 MHz modules. It should certainly be possible to build this system for $300 with receiver. I've been hoping somebody would build a system around these.

mcaplinger on 08-10-2010 12:27 AM

#4 Re: Article: Tragic Little Aerospace offering Micro GPS telemetry unit

Quote:

Is that all there is for an antenna? (see photo in article). l

A quarter wavelength (the length of most full-length spike antennas) at 902MHz is only 3.1 inches. I suspect they're using a loaded dipole, which is independent of a ground plane for the antenna (meaning, you can stick one anywhere and it'll work good).

Yep, it certainly does look like they're using the XBee-PRO XSC 900 Mhz module, at $149 for the pair of 'em from the distributors.



Verrry interesting.

n5wd on 08-10-2010 12:29 AM

#5 Re: Article: Tragic Little Aerospace offering Micro GPS telemetry unit

Yep, that looks like a helical antenna for 900MHz.

If that's what they are using (the XBee), then it also has IC certification, making it legal for use in Canada as well!

CF-105 on 08-10-2010 12:42 AM

#6 Re: Article: Tragic Little Aerospace offering Micro GPS telemetry unit

Quote:

Yep, it certainly does look like they're using the XBee-PRO XSC 900 Mhz module, at $149 for the pair of 'em from the distributors.

That's for the dev kit. OEM modules are $45 apiece from sparkfun. All you really need to do is hook a GPS module with NMEA serial out to the Xbee, then capture the NMEA stream on the ground.

mcaplinger on 08-10-2010 01:34 AM

#7 Re: Article: Tragic Little Aerospace offering Micro GPS telemetry unit

Quote:

Yep, that looks like a helical antenna for 900MHz.

That's the GPS antenna. The 900Mhz antenna is not shown. You have to use the Digi antenna to remain FCC (IC) certified.

jderimig on 08-10-2010 09:53 AM

#8 Re: Article: Tragic Little Aerospace offering Micro GPS telemetry unit

Thanks for the correction. I haven't seen a GPS antenna like that until now.

CF-105 on 08-10-2010 10:05 AM

#9 Re: Article: Tragic Little Aerospace offering Micro GPS telemetry unit

Now, we need to get it compatable and able to communicate with a raven like altimeter and I will have the perfect set up.

cwbullet on 08-10-2010 10:26 AM

#10 Re: Article: Tragic Little Aerospace offering Micro GPS telemetry unit

Tragic Little Aerospace?

Why would I want to use a product made by a company with this name?

There has to be a story behind this.

David, ME

David, ME on 08-10-2010 08:41 PM

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µGTU with antenna - squares are 1/4" inch.

µGTU closeup of top with GPS and radio.

µGTU closeup of bottom.