Other Hobbys

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I came across the TinyGS project on day watching YouTube, where I get most of my ideas, and thought it would be a one to build. After watching a few videos and browsing the web I ordered the hardware. I was already familiar with the ESP32 from other projects so I understood its role. I 3D printed a mount for it. I experimented with power and found it pulls around 0.065 amps. So I tried running it off of 1 18650 3000mAh battery, didn't last a full day! Math says should have lasted a 40+ hours. So turned the screen off, didn't help to much. I ended up added a 2nd battery as seen in the picture below and now I get around 42 hours. I don't know why the batteries drain so fast. The 5v solar panel I'm using seems to be keeping it charged enough. The charge controller I came across on Amazon his pretty cool. I can take power in and out in multiple different ways, I suspect it has something to do with how fast my batteries are draining. This project set on my test bench for months before I finally settled on an antenna, My plan for this project was not to spend a lot of money on this project so I ended up using a cheap 433MHz with low gain. Overall this was a very easy project to build and it is serving a good cause.

Useful Websites:

Parts List: All from Amazon.com (total project cost at the time was $124.57 USD)

- UAYESOK 433Mhz External Antenna

- Ankway Solar Panel for Security Camera 5W Solar Panels

- JXMOX USB C to Micro USB Adapter

- QOJH 18650 Rechargeable Battery, 3.7v Lithium ion Battery 18650 3000mAh

- 900mA MPPT Solar Panel Controller - Solar Power Manager Module for 5V Solar Panel - Support Solar and USB Charging

- QILIPSU Waterproof Junction Box IP67 Outdoor Plastic Electrical Project Enclosure Weatherproof

- HiLetgo ESP32 LoRa V3 SX1262 0.96 inch OLED Display Development Board WiFi Bluetooth Dual Core 240MHz CP2102 and 433-510MHz Antenna for Arduino Smart WiFi LoRa 32

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I have recently gotten into meshtastic, I bought me a LILYGO T-Echo to play with then decided to put up my own node. I'm a bit far away from most of the other nodes so by having putting one up on my tower it allowed me to get out to other node. So far it works great, haven't had to touch since the day I installed it. I recently installed a environmental sensor on it that reads temperature, pressure, & humidity. More info can be found here.

List of hardware:
- AKwireless WisBlock Meshtastic Starter Kit US915 Base RAK19007 + Core RAK4631 (Amazon.com)
- Unify Enclosure IP67 150x100x45mm (rakwireless.com)
- 3.7V Lipo Battery 3000mAh (Amazon.com)
- 5.8dBi Lora 915MHz Fiberglass Antenna (Amazon.com)
- BMP280 Sensor (Amazon.com)

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I set me up a GOES16 satellite receiver to get images of earth. After testing some homemade setup I decided to buy the right hardware. I found a kit on Amazon so after a day putting it together and programming the raspberry pi, it's up and running full time on solar power. I learned everything from USRadioguy, I recommend checking out his website if your interested.

*2025 UPDATE: GOES16 has been replaced with GOES19, same setup and hardware just different script running on the pi.

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I like to build my own antennas drom time to time. Below are links to a few antennas I have built lately. More to come!

137MHz QFH Antenna 1090MHz Collinear Antenna 250MHz Satcom 7ele Yagi

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This is an 8-element collinear antenna made from LMR 400 coaxial cable. The first and last elements are 1/4 wavelength, while the others are 1/2 wavelength, adjusted for the velocity factor. The entire assembly is housed inside a 3/4" PVC pipe.

The results, shown in the images below, exceeded my expectations—I’m very satisfied with its performance.

I built this antenna specifically to feed data to FlightAware using a Raspberry Pi and a FlightAware dongle. You can view my real-time results here.

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