OGN-Tracker implementation on the HELTEC CubeCell 6502 with GPS
As of now the OGN transmission and relaying are implemented and working well. As well status and info messages are sent like other OGN-Trackers. Serial console prints GPS NMEA and setting parameters is possible via $POGNS sentence, however there is an issue with characters being lost thus this needs to be addressed.
The supplied ISM and GPS antennas do work but are not great: for best position accurary use a small ceramic GPS antenna with an LNA and for best ISM transmissions use well tuned monopole with a good counterweight or a dipol.
You can set the parameters with any terminal program which is able to send characters to the serial port emulated on the USB. Ctrl-C lists all parameters and theie current values. You can change a parameter value with sending:
$POGNS,<name>=<value>
Each time you change a parameter with $POGNS the full parameter set is written into flash thus permanently stored.
Aircraft-type: drone-type is 13 or 0xD
$POGNS,AcftType=13
Transmitted power: [dBm]
$POGNS,TxPower=14
Info-parameters: like registration, pilot name, aircraft type, model, manufacturer, other identification Each parameter is a string up to 15 ASCII characters which are non-blank and within 7-bit range. The legal names are: Pilot, Manuf, Model, "Type", SN, Reg, ID, Class, Task, Base, ICE, PilotID, Hard, Soft, Crew
$POGNS,Reg=XY-ABC,Pilot=John
The info-parameters are transmitted at slow pace and are visible in the APRS data stream.
In the firmware subdirectory of the project you can find precompiled firmware files which can be flashed to the device.
This project is compiled with PlatformIO and requires a forked HELTEC library modified to enable OGN transmission and reception https://github.com/pjalocha/CubeCell-Arduino This library should be placed under lib sub-folder of the project.
I include below the commands which worked for me on a Linux laptop, it might be a little different on Windows
Install PlatformIO
sudo apt-get install python3-venv
python3 -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/platformio/platformio/master/scripts/get-platformio.py)"
Clone the repository code
git clone https://github.com/pjalocha/cubecell-ogn-tracker.git
cd cubecell-ogn-tracker
It is no longer needed to clone the hacked HELTEC library - big thanks to Sylwester: http://github.com/SylwBar !
Compile and upload
~/.platformio/penv/bin/pio run --target upload