Ever hear of nanosats? Mere mortals can buy them even and put them into orbit (certainly a modest kickstarter campaign can get one built).
There is also the OSCAR [wikipedia.org] series of amateur radio satellites that are generally available if you have qualifications as a ham radio operator.
Or for that matter, perhaps you want to watch the X-37B that the U.S. Air Force has sent up to try and figure out what they are doing?
In other words, there are plenty of applications for this kind of technology, especially if it was cheap enough to build that small "hacker" teams could pool resources and make it happen.
Every single one of the other 5 finalists could be used by more hobbyists, for cheaper than that project. Too exclusive. Want to do ham stuff? How about the SDR one? Like crypto? Chipwhisper can be built for cheaper than the cheapest satellite. The raman spectrometer? Tons of people could use one of these and it's dirt cheap. Open source tricorder? That one was kinda boring, but still, accessible, and I'm sure someone would do something interesting.
SatNOGS? Exclusive to a very very small group of people rel
Exclusive to a very very small group of people relative to the others. Not a good choice.
This is the quote right here. Yes the concept is great but lets face it what won here was a small niche concept (networked satellite monitoring) in a small niche part (tracking satellites) of an already small subset (RF / Ham) of the hacking community.
I think they cover important projects and some of the projects they host are amazing. That said, I think their selection system and even the 'celebrity' judges all kind of were bent on finding something novel more than useful or revolutionary. The hackaday journalists are notorious for not understanding what they cover or get over excited by so so tech or non-economical or copycat projects.
Actually it caters for an even *smaller* niche, specifically the intersection of the groups you highlighted and those who are too incompetent to put together their own station.
That said it does look like a nicely integrated system, though this comes at a price - no real filtering on the RF input (big problem for the 138 MHz band in particular), limited to using the crappy LNA on the sdr, etc.
Lamest One (Score:0)
Llama llama llama. This one was the worst of the 5. How many of us have satellites?
Re:Lamest One (Score:2)
Ever hear of nanosats? Mere mortals can buy them even and put them into orbit (certainly a modest kickstarter campaign can get one built).
There is also the OSCAR [wikipedia.org] series of amateur radio satellites that are generally available if you have qualifications as a ham radio operator.
Or for that matter, perhaps you want to watch the X-37B that the U.S. Air Force has sent up to try and figure out what they are doing?
In other words, there are plenty of applications for this kind of technology, especially if it was cheap enough to build that small "hacker" teams could pool resources and make it happen.
Re: (Score:0)
Every single one of the other 5 finalists could be used by more hobbyists, for cheaper than that project. Too exclusive. Want to do ham stuff? How about the SDR one? Like crypto? Chipwhisper can be built for cheaper than the cheapest satellite. The raman spectrometer? Tons of people could use one of these and it's dirt cheap. Open source tricorder? That one was kinda boring, but still, accessible, and I'm sure someone would do something interesting.
SatNOGS? Exclusive to a very very small group of people rel
Re: (Score:2)
Exclusive to a very very small group of people relative to the others. Not a good choice.
This is the quote right here. Yes the concept is great but lets face it what won here was a small niche concept (networked satellite monitoring) in a small niche part (tracking satellites) of an already small subset (RF / Ham) of the hacking community.
I won't see people running out to build these.
Typical for hackaday (Score:0)
I think they cover important projects and some of the projects they host are amazing. That said, I think their selection system and even the 'celebrity' judges all kind of were bent on finding something novel more than useful or revolutionary. The hackaday journalists are notorious for not understanding what they cover or get over excited by so so tech or non-economical or copycat projects.
Re: (Score:0)
Actually it caters for an even *smaller* niche, specifically the intersection of the groups you highlighted and those who are too incompetent to put together their own station.
That said it does look like a nicely integrated system, though this comes at a price - no real filtering on the RF input (big problem for the 138 MHz band in particular), limited to using the crappy LNA on the sdr, etc.
Re: (Score:2)
all uses which have less practical use for me than 99% of hackaday posts. which is quite an accomplishment!
and you would think that amateur sats that already have goal of making received data available are already making said data available?
if I were to build one or two of the projects, this one would be the last on the list.
but it's SPACE! and the prize is space! .. I seriously don't get the rationale behind awarding them the first prize.
sure, it's cheap to build, but also the one with least uses.
Re: (Score:0)
> least uses
Eh? seriously, do you have any other alternative and cheaper off-the-grid terminal for weather data coming from satellites?