KU2Y

CubeSatSim Kits Available at Hamvention

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For Hamvention 2024, I am very happy to announce a limited availability of Beta CubeSatSim Kits!  We will have some CubeSat Simulator kits at the AMSAT booth at Hamvention on Friday and Saturday, and will also make some available online on the AMSAT Store a few weeks later – look for ANS and social media for the date they will go on sale.  We will only ship AMSAT Store kit orders to U.S. addresses.  They are priced at $400 including shipping.

The Beta CubeSatSim Kits contain:

  • All three PCBs (STEM Payload, Solar, and Battery Boards) fully assembled and tested with all components soldered in
  • Raspberry Pi Zero WH with a fully programmed micro-SD card and a fully programmed Raspberry Pi Pico WH
  • AMSAT logo Remove Before Flight tag switch
  • Four-piece 3D printed frame and nylon screws and nuts, ready for you to assemble with included mini screwdriver
  • Pi Camera, ribbon cable, and nylon screws and nuts ready for you to plug into the Pi Zero WH and attach to the frame
  • Metal standoffs, stacking headers, and JST jumpers ready for you to stack the PCBs and the Pi Zero WH into the board stack
  • 10 solar panels, JST connectors, and double stick mounting tape, ready for you to solder the JST wires to the panels and mount them using the tape on the frame
  • BME280 pressure, temperature, altitude, and humidity sensor, and MPU6050 IMU/gyro ready for you to solder the male pin headers so you can plug them into the sockets on the STEM Payload Board
  • Two 6″ SMA coax cables and two SMA antennas for you to connect to the STEM Payload board and the frame
  • Instruction sheet with parts inventory and link to the online instructions.

    AMSAT Beta CubeSatSim Kit

The approximate time for you to complete the kit by soldering the solar panels and sensor pin headers, and assembling the board stack and frame is less than two hours.  You will need a soldering iron, solder, scissors, and an included mini Phillips screw driver.

The kit instructions are here:  https://CubeSatSim.org/kit-beta

The current Beta CubeSatSim has some improvements over the v1.2 version, including an FM transceiver, Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller, and RF command and control.  You can also modify it to fly as a 500mW high altitude balloon payload.

You can see all the updates here: https://www.amsat.org/amsat-cubesatsim-beta-release-v1-3/

For those who like to solder the components and 3D print their own frame, we also have the Beta v1.3 blank PCB sets available at the AMSAT Store for $35:  https://www.amsat.org/product/amsat-cubesatsim-pcb/ You will need to purchase the rest of the parts from Digikey and Amazon for approximately $300 using the Bill of Materials https://CubeSatSim.org/bom-beta.

During this beta period, we ask for your help in testing the new hardware and software and making sure that all the instructions and documentation are accurate.  As we have announced previously, past purchasers of the CubeSatSim v1 PCB board sets are eligible for a free beta v1.3 set of PCB boards.  Just email me ku2y [at] arrl.net! I will verify the order and ship you a new set of 3 blank boards.  The boards will have the surface mount components already mounted.  The first one hundred who contact me in the first half of this year will be eligible to receive them.

73,

Alan Johnston, PhD, KU2Y
AMSAT VP Educational Relations
ku2y [at] arrl.net

AMSAT CubeSatSim Beta Release – v1.3

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You might have heard about it or seen it at Hamvention or Symposium, but the official release of the new Beta CubeSatSim hardware and software is finally here!!

The new beta PCB board set v1.3 is shown in Figure 1, the new board stack is shown in Figure 2, and the new frame and solar panels is in Figure 3.

 

Figure 1. AMSAT CubeSatSim Beta PCB Board Set.  From left to right, battery board, STEM Payload board, and Solar board (the replacement for the Main board)

Figure 2. AMSAT CubeSatSim Beta Board Stack

 

Figure 3. AMSAT CubSatSim Beta Frame and Solar Panels

Here are some links to information about the Beta release:

The software for the beta release is here:  https://CubeSatSim.org/beta

The beta wiki instructions are here: https://CubeSatSim.org/wiki-beta

The beta Bill of Materials (BOM) is here: https://CubeSatSim.org/bom-beta

The beta hardware files are here: https://CubeSatSim.org/hardware-beta

The beta frame STL files for 3D printing are here: https://github.com/alanbjohnston/CubeSatSim/tree/beta/hardware/frame/v1.3.2

Information about the latest beta software release is here: https://github.com/alanbjohnston/CubeSatSim/releases/tag/v1.3.2

The AMSAT CubeSatSim is a low-cost, fully functional open source model of a CubeSat nano-satellite.  It has the following features:

  • Working solar panels and rechargeable batteries
  • Multi-channel voltage, current, and temperature telemetry transmitted in the Amateur Radio UHF band generated by a Raspberry Pi Zero single board computer
  • Telemetry decoding using AMSAT’s FoxTelem software or APRS software
  • STEM Payload board with Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller with sensors
  • Tape measure dipole or SMA antenna with integrated Low Pass Filter
  • 3D printed frame

Here is a summary of the changes with the new beta hardware and software:

  • New FM transceiver module for better frequency stability and simple command and control receiver to change telemetry modes using RF
  • More modern and cheaper Raspberry Pi Pico micro controller on STEM Payload board
  • Easily connect additional sensors for the Pico or Pi using the Qwiic connector system (https://www.sparkfun.com/qwiic )
  • SSTV camera images now display callsign and battery status overlay
  • Can be modified to fly as a balloon payload with 500mW FM output for SSTV, APRS, or CW transmissions with software support on Pico for a serial GPS module
  • Lower parts cost and easier to source. All parts can now be sourced from electronics distributors and Amazon including easy to find solar panels.  New BOM uses Octopart electronic part inventory site with one click distributor ordering (https://CubeSatSim.org/bom-beta)
  • Redesigned for blue INA219 voltage and current sensors instead of more expensive purple ones
  • Battery board now has integrated voltage and current sensor
  • Simpler electrical power system with no boost converter or charge control modules
  • Kits can be built with through hole parts except for a few surface mount parts.  Fully assembled boards will hopefully be available in the future using SMT parts
  • Transmit and receive frequencies easily configurable from default 434.9 MHz and 435 MHz

During this beta period, we ask for your help in testing the new hardware and software and making sure that all the instructions and documentation are accurate.  To help with this, I am pleased to announce that past purchasers of the CubeSatSim v1 PCB board sets are eligible for a free beta v1.3.2 set of PCB boards.  Just email me ku2y at arrl.net! I will verify the order and ship you a new set of 3 blank boards.  The boards will have the surface mount components already mounted.  The first one hundred who contact me in the next three months will be eligible to receive them.  For other orders, you will be able to choose between the v1 boards or the new beta v1.3.2 boards.

73,

Alan Johnston, PhD
KU2Y
AMSAT Vice President for Educational Relations

P.S. AMSAT has CubeSatSim Loaners available to ship to your event or presentation or STEM outreach activity – just contact me if you have an upcoming event email at ku2y at arrl.net or on social media at @[email protected]

AMSAT CubeSatSim First Official Release – v1.0

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I am very pleased to announce the first software release of the CubeSatSim software v1.0!  Along with the first hardware release v1.0 last month, this is an important milestone for this AMSAT educational project.

All the CubeSatSim software and hardware is fully open source.  The v1.0 release info is available on GitHub and the v1.0 hardware info including Gerber files is available here.

Thanks to Bruce Paige, KK5DO, we have CubeSatSim blank PCB sets and CubeSatSim Raspberry Pi SD cards available on the AMSAT Store. For the moment, they are only available to ship to US addresses. In a post-COVID future, we hope to offer worldwide shipping.

The CubeSatSim Raspberry Pi SD Card  is a 16 GB micro SD card with Raspberry Pi OS Lite and all the CubeSatSim software installed and configured on it.  It is available at the AMSAT Store for $20.  You can also download the image and flash it to your own SD card using these instructions. Here is the readme file for the CubeSatSim software.

With the 3 board sets of blank PCBs, you can order the parts and solder your own CubeSatSim. They are available at the AMSAT Store for $35.

I want to take this opportunity to thank the team that has been working on the CubeSatSim Project including Pat Kilory, N8PK, Jim McLaughlin, KI6ZUM, and David White, WD6DRI.  In addition, Chris Thompson, G0KLA/AC2CZ has been instrumental in helping me get the FSK/BPSK transmit code working and has added support for the CubeSatSim to FoxTelem. Yesterday’s release of FoxTelem v1.11 has full CubeSatSim support.

And of course, thank you to the AMSAT Board of Directors and the AMSAT membership who have supported this project for many years.

73,

Alan
KU2Y
AMSAT Vice President for Educational Relations

P.S. AMSAT has CubeSatSim Loaners available to ship to your event or presentation or STEM outreach activity – just contact me if you have an upcoming event.