Rocketry Planet

I liked the product demo on Apogee Components, to have the crowd hear the flight events from the computer with a speaker system would be cool. The new interface for programing is a big selling point. Once I have my Ham Radio Technician license I will be ordering one.

Where is the software available for download? I am hoping to use this unit for a flight on Saturday!

You can download the latest packages from altusmetrum.org/AltOS

FYI, I'm at Airfest (for Friday and Saturday only!) with several TeleMetrum-equipped airframes.

I would jump on this in a second if they had more than 10 frequencies available. With more and more 70 cm devices being used, the spectrum at launches is getting a bit crowded.

Open up the whole band, like BRB, and you will have at least one more customer.

Thanks

The software is all available for download from the AltOS page:

http://www.altusmetrum.org/AltOS/

We're just finishing up the Windows installer (for XP, Vista an Win7) and should have that ready in another day or so. The current Windows package is a .zip file full of the necessary files and takes a bit of manual work to use.

Is there a quick explanation about what to do with the files?

Thanks.

How about a Windows installer instead? I've uploaded test versions of this packaging to:

http://www.altusmetrum.org/~keithp/altos.html

I'd love to know if these work on your system; they've been tested on XP, Mac OS X 10.6 and Debian Linux.

Excellent. The installer seems to have worked on my Vista laptop. Now I need to dig my Telemetrum out of the car (I'm in Dodge City on my way to Airfest) and give it a try.

n1lul: There is no hard constraint, other than that we thought the user interface would be simpler for most people if we present channel numbers from 0 to 9 instead of absolute frequency. In particular, with a 38k4 GFSK signal, 100 khz turns out to be a good "channel width" (with suitable guard bands).

If you really want to go somewhere else in the 70cm ham band, you can change which frequency corresponds to channel 0 by tweaking the RF calibration constant. It scales linearly with frequency, and the default is channel 0 equals a center frequency of 434.550 Mhz. To change it, just divide your desired channel 0 frequency in Mhz by 434.550 and multiply that by the existing calibration constant. Change the cal value, and save the change. Then each channel number will be 100 khz up.

I'd be careful to test the results, because while the existing RF filters should cover much of the 70cm ham band, my current production tests only verify performance in our normal 1 Mhz operating frequency range from 434.5 to 435.5 Mhz. If you have a calibrated power meter, you can measure the CW output power on any desired frequency using the existing firmware's RF test command... if it's right around +10dBm, then the filter is fine on your desired frequency.

Honestly, though, some simple frequency and time coordination with other flyers should be sufficient for most launches. If nobody seems to be doing it already, maybe even offer to be "that guy" ...

After spending a couple days at Airfest where there was a lot of interest in the boards, *and* lots of contention for one well-known 2m APRS frequency... Keith and I started talking about how best to provide "more channels". Suggestions would be welcome. I'm hesitant to just have users directly input a frequency, since maintaining 100khz channels seems like a good idea... [shrug>

BRB suggests a scheme based on NAR/TRA numbers to set frequencies. I don't know if this has become generally used. Obviously collisions can still happen.

http://www.bigredbee.com/frequencies.htm