Over on her YouTube channel, SignalsEverywhere, Sarah has uploaded a new video showing how she uses a PlutoSDR, HackRF and mixer to transmit DVB-S digital amateur TV to a standard satellite set top box. In this video the idea is to get a little more range by using the PlutoSDR to transmit in the 70cm band, then upconverting that to the 23cm band right at the satellite receiver. Transmitting at the lower frequency yields a higher power output from the PlutoSDR and less cable loss. The mixer consists of a passive mixer chip and a HackRF is used as the mixer LO signal source as a temporary test solution.
Digital TV Transmitter 70cm ATV to 23cm Satellite Receiver Using a Mixer/Upconverter
The Es'Hail-2 satellite is positioned at 25.5°E which is over Africa. It's reception footprint covers Africa, Europe, the Middle East, India, eastern Brazil and the west half of Russia/Asia. There are two amateur transponders on the satellite. One is a narrow band linear transponder which uplinks from 2400.050 - 2400.300 MHz and downlinks from 10489.550 - 10489.800 MHz. Another is a wide band digital transponder for digital amateur TV (DATV) which uplinks from 2401.500 - 2409.500 MHz and downlinks from 10491.000 - 10499.000 MHz.
Daniel's ground station uses a LimeSDR Mini running on a Beaglebone Black. A 2.4 GHz WiFi parabolic grid antenna is used to transmit to the satellites digital amateur TV uplink. In order to generate enough power for the uplink transmission a GALI-84 amplifier chip is cascaded with a 100W power amplifier. All the electronics are enclosed in a watertight box and placed outside.
A LimeSDR Mini Based Es'Hail-2 DATV Uplink Ground Station
Over on YouTube Tech Minds has posted a video explaining what Es'hail-2 satellite is and why it is interesting for hams and SDR users. Briefly Es'hail-2 is a recently launched geostationary TV satellite that covers Africa, Europe, the Middle East, India, eastern Brazil and the west half of Russia/Asia.
What's special about it is that apart from the TV transmitters, it also contains the worlds first amateur radio transponder in geostationary orbit. So amateur radio users within the region covered by the satellite can simply point their antennas to a fixed position in the sky to transmit to the satellite, and the signal will be rebroadcast over the entire covered area. With a simple LNB, satellite dish and SDR the signals can be received.
After explaining Es'hail-2 Tech Minds also shows a demo of Es'hail-2 radio traffic using a public WebSDR.
The Worlds First Geostationary Satellite For Ham Radio - Es'Hail 2 - Qatar OSCAR-100
Es'hail 2 was launched last November and it is the first geostationary satellite to contain an amateur radio transponder. The satellite is positioned at 25.5°E which is over Africa. It's reception footprint covers Africa, Europe, the Middle East, India, eastern Brazil and the west half of Russia/Asia. There are two amateur transponders on the satellite. One is a narrow band linear transponder which uplinks from 2400.050 - 2400.300 MHz and downlinks from 10489.550 - 10489.800 MHz. Another is a wide band digital transponder for amateur digital TV which uplinks from 2401.500 - 2409.500 MHz and downlinks from 10491.000 - 10499.000 MHz.
Although it launched last year it takes several months for the engineers to test and qualify the transponder for use. Over the last few weeks the transponder was intermittently active during the testing, but now since Feb 13 2019 the amateur transponder has finally been fully activated for amateur radio use.
To receive it with an RTL-SDR or most other SDRs an LNB is required to receive the 10 GHz signal and downconvert it into a frequency range that most SDRs support. Typically an Octagon LNB is used, and these are easy to find and cheap as they are often used for satellite TV.
From various reports seen on Twitter, it seems that the signal is strong enough that a satellite dish is not required for receiving - simply pointing the LNB directly at the satellite is enough.
#Eshail2 Unbelievable. 1st RX Test with my Smartphone, OTG, DVB-T Stick, Octagon LNB. No Dish !!! I hold the LNB in my Hand in the direction of Es Hail2 ... pic.twitter.com/SQjz7WPyzm
If you can't set up a receiver, there is an OpenWebRX livestream of the Es'hail 2 narrowband channel that has been set up by Zoltan/RFSparkling which is available at sniffing.ddns.net:8073 (note the server can only handle 8 users at a time, so try again later if it's busy). Also as pointed out by KD9IXX on Twitter, there are also several websdr.org servers receiving and streaming Es'hail2 including an Airspy based one run officially by AMSAT-DL.
Es'hail 2 was launched last November and it is the first geostationary satellite to contain an amateur radio transponder. The satellite is positioned at 25.5°E which is over Africa. It's reception footprint covers Africa, Europe, the Middle East, India, eastern Brazil and the west half of Russia/Asia.
Although the satellite was launched last year, turning on the amateur transponders has been slow because the commercial systems of the satellite have higher priority for testing and commissioning. However, within the last day the Es'hail 2 team have now begin testing the amateur transponder, and the test signal has been successfully received by several enthusiasts (just check out the Twitter feed). There also appears to have already been a suspected pirate CW signal broadcasting "WELCOME DE ES2HAIL". Actual uplink use of the satellite is not currently wanted, and from the Amsat forums one of the engineers writes:
Before the IOT starts there will be a TRR (test readyness review) in front of the customer. All the testplans and test-specifications will be reviewed. When the test is done there will be a TRB (test readyness board). In the TRB they have to show/present all the measurement results (e.g. inband performance like Gainflatness, Groupdelay... aso.) and compare these results with the specification in the contract. Each unwanted signal makes the measurement difficult and needs to be explained or leads to a so named NCR (non conformance report).
The IOT will be done in shifts/nightshifts and with unwanted signals (if not explain able) some measurements needs to start again and again and leads in addition to a delay for the handover and operation of the satellite.
Maybe that helps to understand why it is really important to have only the IOT uplink signal.
To measure the pattern of each antenna the satellite will be moved east/west by the propulsion system of the DS2000 Bus and the signal level is measured by the IOT station on ground (some cuts) .
The commercial beacon can maybe be switched from LEOP Omni antenna to on station antenna when the satellite is placed in the final slot. This should be the reason for the change of the commercial Ku Band beacon signal level the last days.
If you are interested in receiving Es'hail 2, but live outside the footprint, or don't have a receiver then you can use Zoltan's OpenwebRX live stream of the narrow band portion of the Es'hail 2 downlink. At the moment the beacon doesn't appear to be transmitting, but we expect it to be on and off during the next few days. In his set up he uses an RTL-SDR V3, Inverto LNB, 90cm dish, a DIY bias tee and a Raspberry Pi 3.
He also took a recording of the pirates CW transmission shown in the video below.
Today SpaceX have successfully launched and deployed the Es'hail-2 satellite which is now in geostationary orbit. This launch is special for amateur radio enthusiasts because it is the first geostationary satellite that contains an amateur radio transponder on it. The satellite is positioned at 25.5°E which is over Africa. It will cover Africa, Europe, the Middle East, India, eastern Brazil and the west half of Russia/Asia. Unfortunately, North America, Japan, most of South America, Australia and NZ miss out.
Coverage of Es'hail 2
The satellite has a two bandwidth segments, a 250 kHz narrow band for modes like SSB, FreeDV, CW, RTTY etc, and a 8 MHz wide band for digital amateur TV (DATV) modes like DVB-S and DVB-T.
The downlink frequencies are at 10 GHz so a low cost TV LNB could be used as the antenna. For receiving the narrowband modes, an RTL-SDR or similar SDR could be used, and for the 8 MHz DATV modes a standard DVB-S2 set top box can be used to receive and decode the video. For uplink, the transmission frequency is at 2.4 GHz.
According to the commissioning order of the satellite, it is expected that the AMSAT transponders will be activated only after all tests have been passed, and after other higher priority commercial telecommunications systems have been activated. This is expected to take about 1-2 months.
2018: Es'hail-2 and its amateur radio payload - Graham Shirville (G3VZV) & Dave Crump (G8GKQ)
A few days ago we posted about the release of Rpidatv, a program that allows a Rapberry Pi to transmit DATV without the need for any additional hardware. DATV stands for Digital Amateur TV, and can be received with an RTL-SDR using a program called leandvb.
Over on YouTube, the programmer of Rpidatv (Evariste F5OEO) has uploaded a video that shows a Rpidatv + leandvb system in action. The video demonstrates the touch screen GUI which can be used if a touch capable LCD screen is connected to the Raspberry Pi. It also shows the whole system in action with a video being transmitted from the Raspberry Pi camera to a Linux PC with an RTL-SDR running leandvb.
rpidatv with leandvb
Another video uploaded to YouTube by Qyonek also shows Rpidatv + leandvb in action.
F5OEO writes that the software is capable of generating a symbol rate from 64k symbols to 1M symbols, which is enough to transmit one video with good H264 encoded quality. He also writes that using a low symbol rate may be useful for long distance transmissions as the signal will take up a smaller bandwidth. For example a 250K symbol transmission would only need 300kHz of bandwidth. He writes that this type of transmission could easily be used in the ISM band to replace WiFi video for FPV, but that at the moment video latency is about 1 – 2 seconds and is still being improved.
Once again we remind you that if you intend to transmit using these methods where a GPIO pin is modulated, then you MUST use a bandpass filter at the frequency you are transmitting at, and that you must be licensed to transmit on those frequencies.
A DATV transmission received from a Raspberry Pi transmitter.
