[hpsdr] Project Odyssey

[Robert McGwier]

In Homer's Odyssey,  our intrepid hero  Ulysses has an interesting 
journey in this early classic.  Project Odyssey was born at the Johnson 
Space Center during a design meeting for experiments we hope to be 
include on SUITSAT-2.  SUITAT-2's journey will be (to my mind) at least 
as interesting and magical as that undertaken by Ulysses.   In 
addition,  we think that what we are doing for this project will enable 
low power, hand-held software defined radio objects to be built.  This 
should enable you to take battery operated journey's with your SDR as 
well.  The guts of the RF/SDR is QSD, QSE, and dsPIC33.   Joe, N9WXU and 
Steve, N7HPR both work at Microchip and have been generous with their 
time and talents.  Joe is building both hardware and code to make a very 
interesting integrated housekeeping unit (IHU) for this project.  IHU is 
"space speak" for on board control computer.  Lou McFadin, W5DID,  long 
time AMSAT contributor and board of directors member has been in the 
manned space program as a professional at JSC for 30 years or more 
before he retired.  For AMSAT,  he has done many projects.  In 
particular,  he has been instrumental in getting amateur radio on manned 
space missions from the first with Owen Garriot, W5LFL, all the way 
through to the international space station.  Lou and Steve and a few 
others built the electronics for SUITSAT in a "few days" and got it 
flown.  Keith Curtis, also of Microchip, is a power systems expert.  He 
and Lou are designing an interesting power system for AMSAT that will 
allow the use of myriad battery types and charging sources, not limited 
to but including solar panels as a source and Ultracapacitors, Nicad,  
NiMH, and Li-Ion batteries as energy storage devices.  The boost/buck 
system for matching cells to the main electrical bus and control of 
individual cells in a "battery pack" will greatly optimize battery 
charging and use.   Expect to be able to mine Odyssey for all sorts of 
neat applications including everything from balloon and satellite 
packages to FM repeaters!

Odyssey is not on the main HPSDR banner yet,  but it has a few words and 
a page in the Wiki.  Expect that to be quite dynamic.  Our delivery 
schedule for SUITSAT-2 demands that we move quickly so expect action.

Bob
N4HY

-- 
AMSAT VP Engineering. Member: ARRL, AMSAT-DL, TAPR, Packrats,
NJQRP/AMQRP, QRP ARCI, QCWA, FRC. ARRL SDR Wrk Grp Chairman
"You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat.
You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los
Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly
the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there.
The only difference is that there is no cat." - Einstein