GPS tracker

I looked up GPS Tracker on E-bay and found a ton of products on dog tracking, vehicle tracking, little kid tracking, elderly person tracking confused . Some were cheap ($40) some were $300+.
My question is: would any dog tracker or some other GPS tracker work in a high-altitude rocket?
I wish i had the money to buy a Big Red Bee or some other expensive tracker but I just dont have $300.

Anything that actually works is going to cost you several hundred dollars. Whether you go with a Garmin Astro, a pair of Garmin Rino radios, or a Big Red Bee, you're going to spend north of $300.

I've not seen a known proven GPS setup that sells for less than that.

-Kevin

The Garmin Astro works great. If one person in your club has the handheld, you can track up to 10 of the "collars". They can be had for <$100ea. used.

The Rinos in my opinion are too bulky. I've tried them, but have gotten nowhere near the range of the Astro.

-Ken

Aksrockets said:

I looked up GPS Tracker on E-bay and found a ton of products on dog tracking, vehicle tracking, little kid tracking, elderly person tracking confused . Some were cheap ($40) some were $300+.
My question is: would any dog tracker or some other GPS tracker work in a high-altitude rocket?
I wish i had the money to buy a Big Red Bee or some other expensive tracker but I just dont have $300.

Click to expand...

You might want to think about getting your HAM License and going with
a Big Bee 70cm beacon. Because all that other stuff you found online
likely doesn't have a great range and/or you need to have a license to
operate. Also, there is not only the cost of the transmitter, but also the
cost of the receiver.

The Mark 1 Eyeball works pretty good until you start increasing the
altitude. Afterwards, a tracking device starts to become a must.

I've been 100% successful with the Garmin Astro. I've flown to 27k and been back on the range in an hour with it. I've got one of the collar units - a DC-20, I'd be willing to part with.

Edward

AlphaHybrids said:

I've been 100% successful with the Garmin Astro. I've flown to 27k and been back on the range in an hour with it. I've got one of the collar units - a DC-20, I'd be willing to part with.

Edward

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The Garmin Astro is over $500.00 (Closer to $600). That is a pretty steep
price to pay vs. a BeeLine Transmitter for $60 and a cheap radio that picks
up 70cm (420mhz-450mhz) for around $50-$100 with a Yagi antenna for
around $30.


$120-$200/70cm gear vs $600 Garmin Astro...

That is true. Our club multiple people have the handheld and I was able to find on e-bay a DC-20 for $75. It was the right price for me. My L3 had over $800 in materials and it was worth it to get it back intact. Also, I put it on many of my lower flying rockets to assure recovery.

Edward

I highly recommend Tragic Little Aerospace. Their GPS tracking system costs $299. With the current version you do need a computer, but the GPS is really simple to use, SMALL, and we (my schools team) have not had any issues with it.

https://www.tragiclittleaerospace.com/

They are currently out of stock, but should be getting more in soon! Oh, and they have top notch customer service!

Alby said:

The Garmin Astro is over $500.00 (Closer to $600). That is a pretty steep
price to pay vs. a BeeLine Transmitter for $60 and a cheap radio that picks
up 70cm (420mhz-450mhz) for around $50-$100 with a Yagi antenna for
around $30.


$120-$200/70cm gear vs $600 Garmin Astro...

Click to expand...

You are comparing apples and oranges here. The beeline transmitter is a directional finding unit while the garmin astro is GPS. The difference, lad in the woods with the beeline or any directional unit and you have signal bouncing off trees. You also have no way of knowing how far you are from it. The garmin astro tells you 300 ft that way. Major difference,

tbonerocketeer said:

You are comparing apples and oranges here. The beeline transmitter is a directional finding unit while the garmin astro is GPS. The difference, lad in the woods with the beeline or any directional unit and you have signal bouncing off trees. You also have no way of knowing how far you are from it. The garmin astro tells you 300 ft that way. Major difference,

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He's talking about the BeeLine GPS, not the standard BeeLine.

As far as the signal bounce goes, with practice, you can overcome that.

-Kevin

troj said:

He's talking about the BeeLine GPS, not the standard BeeLine.

As far as the signal bounce goes, with practice, you can overcome that.

-Kevin

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For $60, he is talking about the transmitter and not the GPS. I agree that you can learn to overcome tracking the signal bounce, but it is still there and slows down recovery.

Depending on the terrain and the distance, it's also pretty easy to lose the signal of an RDF beacon when it goes over the horizon, and never get close enough to it to re-acquire the signal. I have lost more than one that way.

troj said:

Anything that actually works is going to cost you several hundred dollars. Whether you go with a Garmin Astro, a pair of Garmin Rino radios, or a Big Red Bee, you're going to spend north of $300.

I've not seen a known proven GPS setup that sells for less than that.

-Kevin

Click to expand...

I'm not sure about how proven it is, but a person at Battlepark use a GPS tracker he got at Best Buy for $80. He also had to use a website ($10/month subscription) to download the location. He launched a 38mm MD rocket to +11K which landed in a wooded area a mile away. With the web site track and a topo map, he was able to walk right to it.

This worked very well. The one thing you must have for this to work is cell service in the launch and recovery area.

Handeman said:

This worked very well. The one thing you must have for this to work is cell service in the launch and recovery area.

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Remember, though, $10/month adds up quickly!

Plus, a lot of sites have spotty cell coverage. It's getting better, but it's still spotty.

-Kevin

troj said:

Remember, though, $10/month adds up quickly!

Plus, a lot of sites have spotty cell coverage. It's getting better, but it's still spotty.

-Kevin

Click to expand...

I agree. What I've found is that a lot of the trackers don't have contracts and you can go month to month but the prices are usually $24 - $39 per month.

You're right about the cell coverage. At Battlepark, 3 years ago we had no cell service, 2 years ago, only Sprint, last year, all the services work, include the 3G. They put up a cell tower within site of the launch area 2 years ago. Guess it took a year or so before all the services put antennas on the tower.

The BRB900 starts at just $299, includes a transmitter AND receiver, and requires no license. Additional features include on-board data recording, accurate altitude reporting using the Trimble Lassen IQ GPS module, integrated battery with charger, and a handheld receiver w/ LCD display that eliminates the need for a laptop. You can't spend more than $417 on a complete setup.

https://bigredbee.com/brb900.htm

Greg

rocketace said:

I highly recommend Tragic Little Aerospace.
They are currently out of stock, but should be getting more in soon! Oh, and they have top notch customer service!

Click to expand...

Is the Falcom FSA03 still available? I thought it was discontinued.

bigredbee said:

Is the Falcom FSA03 still available? I thought it was discontinued.

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This appears to be the case. I was looking for a spare part, because the antenna connection on mine didn't survive an "anomaly in flight", but they seem to be gone for good. I guess TLA will have to redesign its system to continue it.

Too bad, the ublox chipset and the helical antenna seemed to be a great combination for rocketry, except for its mechanical fragility maybe.

Reinhard

Reinhard said:

Too bad, the ublox chipset and the helical antenna seemed to be a great combination for rocketry, except for its mechanical fragility maybe.

Click to expand...

https://www.sparkfun.com/products/9566 maybe?

They sell the helical antenna separately though it seems like a pain to solder.

Naturally Tracking devices are very expensive, I suggest that double your time on paying attention to your love ones or belongings, but if you have the budget then buy one!

bigredbee said:

The BRB900 starts at just $299, includes a transmitter AND receiver, and requires no license. Additional features include on-board data recording, accurate altitude reporting using the Trimble Lassen IQ GPS module, integrated battery with charger, and a handheld receiver w/ LCD display that eliminates the need for a laptop. You can't spend more than $417 on a complete setup.

https://bigredbee.com/brb900.htm

Greg

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Anyone using one of these? I'm thinking of putting one in my 4" Dark Star. I bought a set of 54 mm cti cases at Black Saturday and am thinking I may need some sort of tracking.:grin:

Yes. I bought a BRB900 system one year ago. Works great and no burdensome license required - whoohoo!

I maintained GPS lock on a flight that went 7700 ft in altitude. However, once the rocket touches down, you are likely to lose the signal. The good thing is that the last reported coordinates before touchdown are preserved on the display, and that will get you in the immediate vicinity of the rocket and probably close enough to re-acquire the signal. The last coordinates and final resting place have been about 50' apart in my flights.

Anybody else have good success at long ranges (either in the air or on the ground) with the BRB900?

looking at the BRB900 also and would also like to hear more from folks with them...

My BRB900 worked great until its last flight. Its was typical for the transmitter to lose lock upon launch, but it would always regain it shortly after apogee deployment (the coordinates on the receiver screen would start changing again). Many times the rocket would descend over a hill. If that hill line was more than 1/2 mile from me, the line of sight communication between the Tx and Rx would usually stop, but at least the coord's on the screen were within 5 seconds of when the rocket descended below the hill. Luckily, those coord's stay on the screen (don't turn off the Rx!) and you can walk to those coords using a handheld GPS and type them in as a waypoint. Once you get near the hill, the communication usually gets established again and you'll get updated coord's and you can walk right to the rocket. There were a half-dozen times this past year when I would not have found the rocket without it.

On the last flight (video here: https://youtu.be/EuzlTgR_1QI), satellite lock and Tx-RX communication stopped just after lift-off. The boost was probably over 50 G's and it was a high mach flight, but that doesn't really explain no TX-RX communication. The rocket was close to $500 all things considered, so my flying is at a standstill. Once I get back in the swing of things, I'll probably get a HAM license and a radio beacon.

TD Sky said:

On the last flight (video here: https://youtu.be/EuzlTgR_1QI), satellite lock and Tx-RX communication stopped just after lift-off. The boost was probably over 50 G's and it was a high mach flight, but that doesn't really explain no TX-RX communication. The rocket was close to $500 all things considered, so my flying is at a standstill. Once I get back in the swing of things, I'll probably get a HAM license and a radio beacon.

Click to expand...

Bummer, dude. Your flight doesn't seem all that extreme for the BRB900 to fail under g loading. I had successful GPS re-lock and recovery on a 2.2" rocket with an I284 to 6500 ft. RasAero says Mach 0.98 and about 35 g's for that flight.

I looked at the BRB900 documentation and didn't see any specs about maximum loads and durability of the components.

Nice launch site, btw.

Thanks. I've spent probably 15 hours looking for it and am about ready to give up.

I had to redo the wiring on the battery plug of the transmitter where the ends of the black and red battery wires are pressed into the female plug. I caught it once before a different flight and the wire was hanging on the plug by a thread. I'm pretty sure the repair to both wires was sufficient. Additionally, the GPS board presses into the main board with multiple pins. That connection seemed to get looser and looser with time to the point that even a modest force on the tip of the TX antenna would "rock" the two boards apart enough that the end pins would be completely out. There is not enough room in my AV bay to secure the boards together with a tie-wrap, so I employed other means to keep that from happening. To clarify, I am by no means blaming the Transmitter. I wouldn't be surprised (when and if I ever find the rocket) that I overlooked something important to keep things immobile at 50+ g's and the following "jerk" at burnout.

The launch site is a large farm with no real trees to speak of and the nearest building more than 1/2 mile away. The video picture is slightly misleading...it may look flat there are practically thousands of places for a small rocket to hide, even when there are no crops.

Interesting. My BRB900 came with a yellow wire wrapped around the board and module. After your post, I inspected my unit and sure enough, the end pins were "rocked" a bit, even with the wire wrap. A bit unnerving. Thanks for the heads up - I'll keep an eye on it.

I have the transmitter fairly immobilized in a 38mm coupler tube with foam plugs on both ends. Plenty of room.

Hey guys,

I think you have to look at the way this board is put together and use some judgement on how well you expect things to hold up on very extreme flights.

My biggest concern would be the way the RF module attaches to the main board -- it consists of two rows of pin headers, and the RF board just plugs into it. I do tie them together with a zip tie which is good just to keep them together, but if you're expecting that to hold for 50+g flights, I'd suggest some more positive retention to hold the two boards together. I've seen some post crash damage where these connectors have failed entirely.

Compare this to the construction of the 70cm ham radio version where everything is soldered (surface mount) to the main board -- no daughterboard to worry about.

Same goes for the power connector. You want to do something to ensure that the connector is positively engaged.

The supplied antenna is also fairly heavy. For extreme flights, you may want to consider using a simple wire whip antenna

One more thing -- the factory in Thailand that makes these RF transmit modules is currently shut down due to the flooding. Once I sell the few remaining transmitters I have, it's hard to tell when they will be available again.

bigredbee said:

Hey guys,

I think you have to look at the way this board is put together and use some judgement on how well you expect things to hold up on very extreme flights.

My biggest concern would be the way the RF module attaches to the main board -- it consists of two rows of pin headers, and the RF board just plugs into it. I do tie them together with a zip tie which is good just to keep them together, but if you're expecting that to hold for 50+g flights, I'd suggest some more positive retention to hold the two boards together. I've seen some post crash damage where these connectors have failed entirely.

Compare this to the construction of the 70cm ham radio version where everything is soldered (surface mount) to the main board -- no daughterboard to worry about.

Same goes for the power connector. You want to do something to ensure that the connector is positively engaged.

The supplied antenna is also fairly heavy. For extreme flights, you may want to consider using a simple wire whip antenna

Click to expand...

Good info. Maybe two zip ties as a first step to prevent a pivot point?

Any advice on how to design and attach a simple wire whip antenna? Length? Radio noob, here. Thanks!