TBTracker

Plug and Play RTTY and LoRa High Altitude Balloon Tracker for Arduino and SX127x (or Hope RFM9x).

TBTracker is a sketch for a tracker for high altitude weather balloons. It will send telemetry data in RTTY and LoRa format. It is designed to send telemetry data in the correct format for https://tracker.habhub.org/

It can send data in RTTY or LoRa format on different frequencies and with different callsigns.

Currently it supports:

• Time
• Longitude
• Latitude
• Altitude
• Number of satellites visible
• Internal temperature
• Internal voltage
• External voltage

The code as is, is for the SX1278 module. If you have a SX1276, then change line 5 in radio.ino. See the comments in that file.

You will need two extra Arduino libraries to be able to compile this sketch.:

https://github.com/jgromes/RadioLib (Radiolib, use version 5.5.0 or lower to overcome out of memory errors if you are using an Arduino mini)

https://github.com/mikalhart/TinyGPSPlus (tinyGPS++)

To run this, you need a TTGO T-Deer board or:

• 1 x Arduino Mini - 3.3v (or compatible Arduino board)
• 1 x SX1278 LoRa chip (or compatible LoRa chip. Basically it will work with all sx127x series chips)
• 1 x ATGM336H or any UBlox or compatible GPS device like a NEO6 or NEO8. I recommend the ATGM336H GPS module.

Note that currently setting different flightmodes in uBlox GPS modules is not supported. This could cause GPS failures above 18km when using uBlox GPS modules. I recommend using the ATGM336H GPS modules.

Connect the T-Deer as an Arduino Mini to the Arduino IDE. Many parameters are user adjustable in settings.h

The Arduino Pro mini has a rather small memory capacity. If you run into memory issues, consider disabling RTTY or LORA in the settings.h file. Also disabling DEVMODE in settings.h will free up a lot of memory at the cost of no serial output.

Have fun,

Roel.

Versions

V0.1.0:

• 2023-01-20 - Added support for LoRa HAB mode 0
• 2023-01-20 - Added support for LoRa HAB mode 1 (Telemetry only)
• 2023-01-20 - Added support for LoRa HAB mode 3
• 2023-01-20 - Added support for LoRa HAB mode 5
• 2023-01-20 - Added support for Low Data Rate Optimization