Important: Please ensure amplifiers are turned off when you are finished!!
Please have access to HERON-ground-station repository and GNURadio. If you can’t access any of those locally, consider remoting into the SDR Testbench using RDP (ip: 10.0.1.165) for steps 4 to 6.
Tip: There are a lot of parallel terminals involved. Consider using tmux or some other terminal multiplexer.
# 1. make sure ground station is pointing at the lab
ssh [email protected]
cd k3ng-rotator-python/examples
ipython3 -i ipython_start.py /dev/ttyRotator
rot.set_azimuth(41) # if any of the commands freak out, just try again
rot.set_elevation(3)
rot.get_azimuth()
rot.get_elevation()
exit()
# 2. start the transceiver server on the HERON ground station
ssh [email protected]
cd HERON-ground-station/transceivers
./utils/enable_hackrf_clocks.sh # clock signal detected?
grcc hackrf_esttc_trx.grc
python3 hackrf_esttc_trx.py # press Enter to exit
# or
python3 hackrf_esttc_trx.py --output /tmp/iqdump.fc32
# 3. start the transceiver server on the SDR Testbench (PlutoSDR)
ssh [email protected]
cd HERON-ground-station/transceivers
grcc pluto_esttc_trx.grc
python3 pluto_esttc_trx.py # press Enter to exit
# or
python3 pluto_esttc_trx.py --output /tmp/iqdump.fc32
# 4. start remote control application for HERON ground station transceiver
# (can be done on any computer with a graphical environment)
cd <your_path>/HERON-ground-station/tests/grc
grcc hackrf_remote_control.grc
python3 hackrf_remote_control.py
# 5. start remote control application for SDR Testbanch
# (can be done on any computer with a graphical environment)
cd <your_path>/HERON-ground-station/tests/grc
grcc pluto_remote_control.grc
python3 pluto_remote_control.py
# 6. perform a ping test
cd <your_path>/HERON-ground-station/tests
python3 ping_pong.py # press Enter to exit
Use the remote control API’s to increase amplification if the pings or pongs are not going through.
Important: The remote control API’s have amplifier section(s). Put the sliders to their lowest setting and uncheck all boxes when you are done.
The following code starts the transceiver server on the ground station. Once running, TCP ports 50491 and 50492 are used (by default) to send and receive ESTTC packets via the station. Other TCP ports are used to control the signal chain such as amplifiers. All ports in the server are managed via ZeroMQ, and the ESTTC ports expect/give GNURadio PDU’s. Due to those added layers, a wrapper is present and is discussed later.
ssh [email protected]
cd HERON-ground-station
cd transceivers
grcc hackrf_esttc_trx.grc # generates hackrf_esttc_trx.py
python3 hackrf_esttc_trx.py # runs the transceiver server
# or
python3 hackrf_esttc_trx.py --output /tmp/iqdump.fc32
Important: Please ensure that the TopTek amplifiers are turned off before/after closing the server. A feature to automate this will be implemented as soon as possible. Check below to see how to control the amplifiers without the server running
This requires HERON-ground-station and thereby GNURadio to be present in your machine. If you don’t, then you can RDP into a UTAT machine to do the same, as this requires a graphical environment to run (which SSH does not provide).
cd HERON-ground-station
cd tests/grc
grcc hackrf_remote_control.grc
python3 hackrf_remote_control.py
Alternatively, you can also open the hackrf_remote_control.grc flowgraph through GNURadio Companion and run it from there.
The different tabs are allocated to different functionalities. The most important ones are the amplifier control tabs. Please turn them off or set the sliders to their lowest when not using them.
The following can be done while ssh-ed into the ground station computer
The amplifier control cannot be done while the transceiver server is running. We may implement a daemonized version to overcome this in the future.