OTA: Es’hail 2’s Amateur Transponder, Cellular Satcom, Magma, and More

The amateur transponder on board the Es’hail-2 satellite, launched back in November, has been activated and qualified as ready for amateur use – and use it amateurs most certainly are. Launched in November 2018 by Qatari communications company Es’hailSat, the Es’hail 2 satellite is located at 25.5 degrees East and…
Marty Wittrock's HF transmission measurements

OTA: MarconISSta Deinstalled, LimeSDR 35km Barefoot Transmission, RPi CNI, and More

The MarconISSta mission, which saw a LimeSDR and Raspberry Pi installed on the International Space Station (ISS), has successfully completed its first phase and has been safely deinstalled and stowed. “MarconISSta was deinstalled on Saturday, February 9th 2019, by NASA astronaut Anne McClain,” writes project lead Martin Buscher in what…
MarconISSta Phase 1 Waterfall

OTA: PiTop SDR Upgrade, Osmocom, srsLTE Updates, and More

A video demonstrating the integration of a LimeSDR Mini with the modular, Raspberry Pi-based PiTop laptop has been released – and all it took was a few laser-cut parts. “The PiTop is a rather cool modular laptop that you build yourself and which is based around the Raspberry Pi platform.

OTA: LimeSCAN Demo, GRCon18 Videos, Google Assistant via Ham, and More

The LimeNET Micro campaign has posted a demonstration of an alpha-status project dubbed LimeSCAN, taking advantage of the ability to run software defined radio and general purpose processing tasks on a single standalone unit to scan for radio spectrum usage data and share it via a private Ethereum blockchain. “The…

OTA: SatNOGS Dashboard, Tempest Tutorial, Es’Hail 2 Update, and More

The 35th Chaos Communication Congress (35c3) played host to antenna engineer Friederike Maier, whose talk on software defined radio basics and modulation theory serves as a great introduction to the concepts for beginners. “Encoding or decoding random radio-waveforms doesn’t need incredible expensive hardware any more, which offers new possibilities for…
SatNOGS Dashboard

OTA: A Mysterious Signal, FPV Antenna Gimbals, Fox-1Cliff, and More

Popular software package SDR-Console is set to get transmit support on the LimeSDR range, from version 3.0.4 onwards – once beta testing is complete. The new feature of SDR-Console v3.0.4 was teased by Jason Fairfax on Twitter late last month. “Calling CQ SSB on 144.300 MHz from IO81rk,” he…
SDR-Console transmitting via LimeSDR, courtesy of Jason Fairfax

OTA: LimeNET Micro v2.0, mmWave-to-Optical Breakthrough, Satellite News, and More

The LimeNET Micro has received a few upgrades since its crowdfunding campaign, now in its last two weeks, launched, including considerably improved RF bandwidth, active Power-over-Ethernet (PoE), and both DSI and HDMI display connectivity. Designed to meld the LimeSDR with the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3 to create a fully-standalone…
LimeNET Micro v2.0 Render

OTA: LimeNET Micro Improved, AfriCUBE, Reviving Analogue Cellphones, and More

The LimeNET Micro crowdfunding campaign continues, and has brought with it a welcome change to the design which will greatly increase the radio’s available bandwidth and sample rate while also adding support for camera and display accessories. Announced via a crowdfunding campaign late last month, the LimeNET Micro is the…
LimeNET Micro (underside)

OTA: LimeNET Micro, OpenAirInterface, OsmoCon 2018 Videos, and More

Lime Microsystems has launched a crowdfunding campaign for the LimeNET Micro, an all-in-one device which combines the LMS7002M field-programmable radio frequency (FPRF) chip with a Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3, bringing the LimeNET family to its lowest price point yet. Designed with narrowband applications in mind, the LimeNET Micro operates…
LimeNET Micro

OTA: TIP Summit, Aircraft Reflections, 3D Printed Communications, and More

The team from Lime Microsystems will be at the Telecom Infra Project (TIP) Summit in London next week, with a range of LimeNET and CrowdCell demonstrations. Part of the cross-vendor Telecom Infra Project (TIP), founded to encourage openness and disaggregation in access, backhaul, and core & management of a modern…
University of Washington's 3D printed transmitters

OTA: LimeSDR FPGA Hacks, MarconISSta Update, Arm’s Open BLE Stack, and More

While most users of the LimeSDR focus on its LMS7002M radio frequency integrated circuit (RFIC), naturally enough, there’s flexibility to be found also in its field-programmable gate array (FPGA) – as proven by Gaspar Karm’s project to add a DC-removal filter into the board’s gateware. As the name suggests, a…
Rikard Lindström's 3D-printed LimeSDR Mini case