Ground Station - g7kse/CanSat GitHub Wiki

The ground station is really the most important part of the project. The CanSat can perform its functional requirements but without a method for interacting with it then it is less likely to be successful. There are a few different ways to think about this, they range from 'do nothing' to fully tracked. The decision on which type is down to the complexity of the mission as well as the skills of the team.

Do Nothing

It is perfectly plausible for the CanSat to complete its primary and secondary missions without any interaction from the ground. So no on ground data collection or telemetry. A purely autonomous mission. So the range of complexity could be achieved. However, it is very rare that a team on the ground wouldn't want to know at least that the CanSat is 'alive'

Telemetry (Downlink)

Probably the most likely scenario for most teams. Reception of the data that is being sent from the CanSat. This is explored further in Handling Data. Data packets from the CanSat can be received without too much concern over distances up to 2kM where there is a clear line of site. This means that complex system are not required.

Uplink / Downlink

More complex CanSat's might want to have a way of interacting with the CanSat whilst it id in flight, this might be to perform a certain action at the teams request e.g.deploy landing gear.There should be no real need to add in significantly more complexity into the ground system.The exception being with the software and the introduction of a fallback should the uplink fail.

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Many of the ground stations will consist of a laptop and cabling to a MCU and LoRa receiver. This is a part of the project where creativity in how the team gets differentiated from another. A self contained ground station in a case for example may not perform any different to a lash up with cables all over the place but it certainly shows the project in a different light