New tracker range test result

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Adrian ,

First your dedication and ability's are with out question epic and awe inspiring.

Any way of adding a voice synthsizer to the unit for a live feed over a PA system?

Ive been eyeing K.A.T.E for months and am really close to pulling the trigger, that was unill your unit made some huge strides. I cant see buying

K.A.T.E. with out buying your unit first.

Just curious.

Thanks in advance.

Tom

Tom - I have looked at the voice stuff in the iPhone and it should be easier than any of this other stuff we are doing. I think it will be a quick upgrade after the first release and I even expect to just use bluetooth to my bluetooth speaker (if you want to share) or to ear buds (if you want privacy). After testing some of the voices, I think I'll also just offer a wheel so you can pick which one you want - although I will say the Mandarin was a little tough to follow... :smile:
 
This is seriously awesome....

So in theory, I could connect my iphone via Bluetooth to my car radio, and listen to the rocket launch over my car stereo...in Mandarin... WHILE running the AC ?

:lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol:
 
This is seriously awesome....

So in theory, I could connect my iphone via Bluetooth to my car radio, and listen to the rocket launch over my car stereo...in Mandarin... WHILE running the AC ?

:lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol:

Wherein your self driving car will then take off all by itself to drive to your rocket.

Now we just need to get you some Boston dynamics robots in the back to go get it from the corn field it landed in and we’ll have a fully automated retrieval system...


Sent from my iPhone using Rocketry Forum
 
Having the ability to have voice, and being able to pick one would be great! Thinking an angry Scotsman yelling would be quite fun!

Rocket voice: "now descending at 400 feet per second.... did YEE forget to arm the electronics AGAIN....?"
 
Rocket voice: "now descending at 400 feet per second.... did YEE forget to arm the electronics AGAIN....?"

If you’ve got a few commercial unit out there now, how come the app isn’t available in App Store?
 
If you’ve got a few commercial unit out there now, how come the app isn’t available in App Store?

Tim,

With regards to the App Store, we have been distributing it to the few people with trackers via the Apple TestFlight capability. In that mode, I enter their email address for Apple and then they get an 'invite' to install the software. At this point, it is relatively boring unless you have a ground station to give the phone information (without a GS, it just displays the text 'place holders' for what you would see and the arrow points to lat/lon of 0,0....).
 
Rocket voice: "now descending at 400 feet per second.... did YEE forget to arm the electronics AGAIN....?"


Ok, I realized I should clarify in case anyone assumed this above was a real 'announcement'.... this voice "example" above was hypothetical. I don't have voice in it yet...
 
The more stuff you add.......... The longer it's going to take to make sure all the bits work right, get them assembled, tested and in the hands of the users. Then........If they like it, you can breathe a sigh of relief. Kurt
 
The more stuff you add.......... The longer it's going to take to make sure all the bits work right, get them assembled, tested and in the hands of the users. Then........If they like it, you can breathe a sigh of relief. Kurt

I'll hold my breath for the wire antenna variant.
 
Having the ability to have voice, and being able to pick one would be great! Thinking an angry Scotsman yelling would be quite fun!
TeleGPS has this robotic monotone. Elevation... Bearing...Range... It wasn't a cute voice like Kate. Just robotic and annoying. Useful info though. We drove through a drive through at MacDonalds late one night for university project with the tracker in a car yapping away and I had a Yagi hanging out the window and laptops open inverter wires everywhere. They were seriously perplexed as to what we were up to. We just said Rockets!!! They gave us half off on food.

Maybe Adrian could do a better sound over than that robot voice for sure.
 
Adrian A.
When is the expected market date? I would also like to order 1 or 2 depending on price. This system is very impressive.

Sent from my SM-T700 using Rocketry Forum mobile app

Ummmm, You'll have to buy two in order to have a complete tracking system. If you want two systems, you'll need to buy 4 units. That's the way I understand it.
The initial quoted price is $130.00 each or $260.00 sans shipping. That's the price of what I paid for a Beeline GPS tracker on 70cm. (Which has its own advantages
and I'm not giving up on mine!!) You want two systems $520.00. Still over 10 years ago one could easily spend $1,000.00 or more for a GPS tracking system.
How times have changed for the better. Kurt
 
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I thought one base could track multiple transmitters at the same time?

Ummmm, You'll have to buy two in order to have a complete tracking system. If you want two systems, you'll need to buy 4 units. That's the way I understand it.
The initial quoted price is $130.00 each or $260.00 sans shipping. That's the price of what I paid for a Beeline GPS tracker on 70cm. (Which has its own advantages
and I'm not giving up on mine!!) You want two systems $520.00. Still over 10 years ago one could easily spend $1,000.00 or more for a GPS tracking system.
How times have changed for the better. Kurt
 
I thought one base could track multiple transmitters at the same time?
I know Adrian or Kevin will chime in as well in case things have changed. But the initial units can be either a transmitter or a base station, and base stations can track multiple transmitters. I know I read a message earlier in this thread that indeed at a test launch they were able to see multiple transmitters on one iPhone. So you could buy 3 units - two transmitters and one base station. 4 Would give you the ability to track 3 rocket parts at the same time from the single base station.

So it's not a paired system. I know Adrian has mentioned he may eventually ship a base station only module that would be less expensive than than a regular combo unit. Either way still a very good value.


Tony
 
Ok, so it will be interesting to see what the protocol is if multiple Rockets are flying at the same time and keeping track of each one. If each flyer is using their own base station, are the base stations going to be reporting positions amongst themselves? I understand the networking feature can be a plus but could it be possible that some positions could be dropped out if a multitude is flying at the same time. Kurt
 
Ok, so it will be interesting to see what the protocol is if multiple Rockets are flying at the same time and keeping track of each one. If each flyer is using their own base station, are the base stations going to be reporting positions amongst themselves? I understand the networking feature can be a plus but could it be possible that some positions could be dropped out if a multitude is flying at the same time. Kurt
+1

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FWIW, the Android software for Telemetrum has a much better-quality voice.

I personally like the robotic tone. I always just thought of it as having Stephen Hawking commentating my flight!
 
The voice for Steven Hawking was actually trademarked I believe and was supposed to be for him only. That said, I believe the voice that comes with the windows/Linux Altus software might be from the open source Festival speech server. The Stephen Hawking voice-like entity I believe is subtly different. I hear the same voice with the voice activation in the Linux program Xastir. There are a variety of voices available for the Festival server that are open source and I believe that "Kate" is in there also. It's been awhile since I've compiled the code for that program. I am just a script kiddie and follow other people's instructions for building code and never mastered coding. Well I did basic and Fortran in the 70s but lost that experience to time. If anyone knows of different facts chime in and correct me. Kurt
 
Ok, so it will be interesting to see what the protocol is if multiple Rockets are flying at the same time and keeping track of each one. If each flyer is using their own base station, are the base stations going to be reporting positions amongst themselves? I understand the networking feature can be a plus but could it be possible that some positions could be dropped out if a multitude is flying at the same time. Kurt

Each base station / tracker pair has its own dedicated radio channel that is doing the communication to send back data from your own tracker about once per second. That communication isn't affected by any other flyers at the field. That takes about 1/2 to 2/3 of the radio time, and so the rest of the time is available for coordination between users. Both units make use of that coordination time. The tracker listens for other trackers on a common lost and found channel, and at the same time, the ground stations talk to other ground stations on a ground station coordination channel.

For the lost rocket relay scenario, a tracker at altitude will hear a packet from a lost rocket and then send that data down along with its own data back to its ground station. The ground station will broadcast the found rocket location to other ground stations when it does its coordination transmission. You will be able to also set a ground station to listen on the ground station coordination channel full-time if you want to just monitor the flights of all the other Featherweight GPS users.
 
Let's say you are flying a 2 stage rocket, you need 4 units total to maintain the normal pairs? Do you also need 2 iPhone devices? When you are looking in your app, you see the paired device, then the "lost and found" rockets as well? Is there a way to label your devices so people know which rocket part is where?

It sounds like you could use just 3 devices for the 2 stage rocket scenario but you are relying on the "lost and found" signal for one of the devices while only one has the dedicated channel?
 
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Let's say you are flying a 2 stage rocket, you need 4 units total to maintain the normal pairs? Do you also need 2 iPhone devices? When you are looking in your app, you see the paired device, then the "lost and found" rockets as well? Is there a way to label your devices so people know which rocket part is where?

It sounds like you could use just 3 devices for the 2 stage rocket scenario but you are relying on the "lost and found" signal for one of the devices while only one has the dedicated channel?

Originally the plan was for a dedicated ground station for each stage. Since then we have been evolving the way we will handle multiple trackers and ground stations so that it should be possible to use one phone and one ground station for both stages. Whichever tracker you're watching with the phone will have the 2-way communication that lets the tracker know it's not lost. A tracker will declare itself lost after it is out of contact of Bluetooth and LoRa for a few minutes.
 
How will this product differ from the Open-Source Tracksoar product already available? Their hardware seems to be very similar--with most differences coming via software. But since Tracksoar is open source--some of these could be developed. In fact, I heard the developer was coming out with a 2.0 version soon.

https://www.tracksoar.com

Not being critical--knowing me, I'll buy and fly both! :)
 
How will this product differ from the Open-Source Tracksoar product already available? Their hardware seems to be very similar--with most differences coming via software. But since Tracksoar is open source--some of these could be developed. In fact, I heard the developer was coming out with a 2.0 version soon....
I'm not affiliated with either company but from a quick perusal of the Tracksoar website:

"The Tracksoar uses the amateur 2 meter radio band (144.390MHz in the US) which requires an amateur radio license to operate."

So right there, a pretty big difference, as the Featherweight tracker does not require a license.

TrackSoar Ready to Fly: $195
Stated price of Featherweight tracker: $130

Another substantial difference.

Cost of base station:
TrackSoar: $??? APRS capable receiver
Featherweight Tracker: $130 unit (+ optional $40 enclosure and battery charger) which can also be used as a transmitter.

Software:
TrackSoar: APRS user supplied software?
Featherweight Tracker: supplied iOS and eventually Android

With a few minutes looking at each website it seems to me the differences are substantial.


Tony
 
How will this product differ from the Open-Source Tracksoar product already available? Their hardware seems to be very similar--with most differences coming via software. But since Tracksoar is open source--some of these could be developed. In fact, I heard the developer was coming out with a 2.0 version soon.

https://www.tracksoar.com

Not being critical--knowing me, I'll buy and fly both! :)

From the website provided, I would say two obvious differences are A) the TrackSoar requires a HAM license and the Featherweight does not and B) The TrackSoar is priced (currently on the web site) at $200 - and the Featherweight introductory price is $130. [One might expect an introductory price to go up some but I would not expect it to go up to that level...]

Beyond that, I can't really comment as I'm not familiar with the TrackSoar product but I wish ill will towards no one - even possible competitors... :smile:

... edit: Tony clicked post before I did... I think he also answered more thoroughly than I did... :smile:
 
How will this product differ from the Open-Source Tracksoar product already available? Their hardware seems to be very similar--with most differences coming via software. But since Tracksoar is open source--some of these could be developed. In fact, I heard the developer was coming out with a 2.0 version soon.

https://www.tracksoar.com

Not being critical--knowing me, I'll buy and fly both! :)

Tracksoar as you know Les is APRS and is meant to fly in high altitude balloons. I think some have flown them in rockets but personally I'm still leary of that tiny patch GPS
antenna inside of a rocket that's going on a high dynamic flight. It has the limitations of APRS and of course requires a Ham license. Advantages: 300mw output and
can be received by any APRS rig for decoding. Probably better ground footprint than 900Mhz. Different antennas could be used in different projects and a good antenna with 300Mw is going to carry well on 2 meters. Disadvantages: That chip GPS receiver antenna, Ham license, only once every 5 second datastream and no network tracking as is designed into the featherweight project. The Ublox chipset is a good one although I think that's what the featherweight uses too. Kurt Savegnago KC9LDH
 
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