Beginners Guide to Tracking using dl-fldigi

This is a short guide to receiving live tracking data from a balloon sending out GPS fixes. Covering setting up a radio, computer and the software to upload the tracking data to a central server.

Another excellent guide can be found at Project Horus

• Radio Receiver - needs to be able to receive between 430MHz and 440MHz (also known as the 70cm band (as the wavelength is 70cms long)) and also be able to receive SSB (single side band), it is important to note that this isn't FM, many radios only receive FM so look for SSB (which may be described as USB and LSB). Examples of radios used by present UKHAS members include:
  • Yaesu FT-790R - old but amazing, can be found on ebay for around £100
  • Yaesu FT-817(ND) - probably now the favourite, very wide range of receive and transmit and is portable due to a battery. approx £450
  • Icom IC-7000 - Literally does everything and a little bit more. approx £900
  • AOR AOR8000 - Wideband Receiver (doesn't do Transmitting)
• Radio Antenna for 70cm - An excellent guide to understanding directional antennas can be found on this Youtube video by Diana Eng of Make Magazine - while its for transmitting its the same concept for receiving!
  • Whip (often included with the receivers) is an omni-directional antenna and is good when the payload is close by but will also pick up other signals and noise.
  • Yagi - directional antenna, the best when the signals are faint. (or for hunting for the payload if GPS has broken but the transmitter works)
  • Moxon - 2 element directional antenna, can be made out of two coat hangers, surprisingly good for ease of construction (typical example)
• Computer with a soundcard and an audio in/mic in running Windows, Mac OS X or Linux
• Cable to connect the radio to the computer - usually a 3.5mm jack (plug) to 3.5mm jack (plug) (should be 2-pole (mono) connectors but you can sometimes successfully utilize easier to find ready made stereo (3-pole) cables. If you are in the UK Cabling4Less and Lindy both have a reasonable range of stereo cable or Maplin stock 1.5 and 3.0m long mono cables.)
• Internet connection, anything from mobile broadband to normal broadband will do
• Software
  • dl-fldigi - an adapted version of the free fldigi soundcard decoding software, this takes the audio that your radio outputs and decodes the balloons signal, it then sends the telemetry it's found over the internet to our server which plots the payloads position on to a map.

How does this all work? We are using the receiver, soundcard, and computer to do Software Defined Radio.

This is using the computer to do a lot of the heavy lifting, rather than the traditional way which might be an integrated radio and modem, which is a lot less flexible (and more expensive!).

SSB (single sideband) radio was initially developed as a low power way to send voice. The exact way it is encoded and decoded are irrelevant.

We use it simply to capture a small part of the radio frequency spectrum, and shift it into a range the soundcard can accept.

How this works is that the transmitter broadcasts a '0' at 434.075MHz (for example) - the SSB radio is tuned to 434.074MHz (1000Hz lower). The SSB receiver outputs a tone that is simply the input frequency minus the tuning frequency.

1000Hz and 1200Hz are easily in the audible range (the receiver will only output from around 300-3000Hz) - and are passed to the soundcard.

The tones are then used by fldigi to decode the RTTY signal - which is basically just RS232 - old fashioned serial - at 50 bits a second. The two tones appear in the above 'waterfall' window of fldigi (see below) as two yellow bands (other signals are interference and noise) and are what the decoder lines should be centred over.

There is a 30-sec recording of live data mp3 version and wav version. These files are about 500kB.

Unless you are very close, you won't hear anything unless you have line of sight. This means that the balloon usually needs to be above your horizon.

(The telemetry audio recording above was made by Daniel Richman during one of Robert Harrison's Icarus launches on Saturday 26th September 2009. The full “un-cut” two minute versions are mp3 and wav. Please note that these are about 1MB and 2MB respectively)

• Most balloon flights in the UK will use 434.075MHz as their main transmission frequency, however due to the cold temperatures the radio frequency often drifts so at some point you'll need to retune the receiver.
• Set up the radio, turn it on, select USB (Upper side band) and tune to 434.075MHz. Once the balloon has been launched you'll need to listen for a bit to see if you can hear anything then tune up and down a bit (say down to 434.065MHz and up to 434.085MHz). If you are using a directional antenna (e.g. Yagi) you'll need to point this in roughly the correct direction. Moving the antenna position may also help - some buildings block the radio frequency.
• You might still be out of range so if you don't hear anything check you've got the right settings and try again in 10 minutes. Pop on to #highaltitude to check that the launch has taken place and that others are getting the signal.
• Once you start hearing the signal it's time to get decoding.

There are now 2 version of dl-fldigi, the newer version (3.20.1-r112) is still in the testing stage however it is recommend to try it. If you have troubles with it then use the older 3.11.4-r85 version. Both versions will successfully decode and upload data to the server.

This is the newer version of dl-fldigi rewritten to work with the latest version of fldigi. Dl-fldigi now has 2 modes of use, there is a (relatively) unmodified mode which is the default and then if you run the program with the hab command argument you get the extensively modified GUI.

$ dl-fldigi --hab

On our binary distributions for OS X, Windows and Linux there is an additional icon/shortcut that adds the hab argument for you. This guide will focus on the hab modified GUI.

• First grab the latest version github
• Open up dl-fldigi in hab mode. On first running it'll open up a wizard to help setup fldigi for you. Please remember to put in you latitude and longitude in decimal format using + or - rather than NSEW e.g. 52.0000 -0.12345

• After the wizard you should be presented with the modified dl-fldigi GUI. This new version parses the data it receives and splits it up into the boxes and calculates the distance and bearing that the payload is from your base station (based on the latitude and longitude you previously input). You may need to resize the window width when you first open dl-fldigi to fit your screen.

• dl-fldigi if connected to the internet should automatically download a list of the possible payloads. To view them select the 'Flight' dropdown box.

• Once you've selected your payload you need to click on the Autoconfigure button which will setup dl-fldigi for tracking.

• Green means that the string passed its checksum test while red means it failed. Feedback from the server can be seen in the bottom status box.
• Currently it is not possible to resize the height of the dl-fldigi hab window but this will be a future addition.

• Before the flight its best to install and set up dl-fldigi
  • Grab a copy of the software: dl-fldigi.
  • Install the software
  • Start dl-fldigi, go to Configure→Operator and fill in the details,

• The key is to input a callsign, this can be your callsign or just a nickname - it's so that we can identify the data that you are passing to the server.

• Once you've filled in the rest of the details go to the DL Client tab of the preferences window, here you can select which payload you are tracking. Depending on the version you are using (Version 2.0+), you may need to click the “Autoconfigure” button.

• Finally check that dl-fldigi is setup to extract the telemetry data, make sure the “Enable Detection and Extraction” box is ticked.

• When this is selected it'll automatically setup your fldigi to decode the payloads signal!
• Now connect the radio with your cable to audio in, you should start to see the signal appear on the bottom waterfall of dl-fldigi. It should be 2 yellow lines on a blue background, click on the right line and this will place the 'decoding lines' over the top of the signal (these are displayed as red). Now dl-fldigi should start to decode the data.

• If you have only just started to receive the data the signal might still be weak and so there maybe some mistakes, you can often improve the signal by adjusting the antenna to point more in the right direction.

Data will appear above the waterfall window, similar to:

ATLAS,1451,22:22:37,52.793,0.419,27446.000,0.2;0;0

• dl-fldigi forwards the strings to the central server.
• Raw data can be found here
• The server does further checks and then will post them to the spacenear.us tracker
• Information about who is listening can be found on the loggers page
• If you wish to try out receiving and decoding data without posting to the logger, then please refer to version specific instructions on dl-fldigi