Sunday, May 31, 2009

Automatic plant watering system, Part II

Last summers automatic plant watering system worked well, but it never ended up leaving the breadboard. So as I already have my pepper plants planted for this year, I wanted to get a more permanent system up and working. I took the design from last year and built it on a Rabbit Flex dev board I have had laying around since I had used the rc3400 I built last years on for a separate project. One of the nice parts of this board is that it has on-board Ethernet which I plan to take advantage of.

This version will have a web based interface to allow me to control the watering times remotely. Along with the rain detector that was built last year, it will also have temperature and humidity sensors that will allow me to adjust watering accordingly based on current conditions. Ideally it will also be able to show how much water I am using per day once I calculate the flow rate of my system.

Design:


The basic system is operational right now along with the external sensors, the web interface is the last step of the project, along with a case to mount the project in.

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Quadrifilar Helix Antenna for NOAA APT Reception

Since most of my previous attempts of NOAA APT live weather imagery reception have resulted in rather poor quality images, I finally decided to give it a real try this summer. I started with purchasing a serious receiver, the icom IC-R7000. With continuous coverage of 25Mhz all the way to 2Ghz, it is probably one of the best scanner / receivers I have ever used. It has the Japan built quality of electronics that you just don't find anymore and the feel of a very solid piece of electronics. Along with this I purchased a registered copy of WXtoImg, which is definitely the best APT decoding software available. I have used several of the free APT decoding applications, and while they work... they just don't have the image clarity that WXtoImg offers. WxtoImg also can control tuning of my icom IC-R7000 via rs-232 which is very nice as well.

The final missing piece I need is a good antenna. Here is an example of an APT capture using a dipole antenna with ground plane tuned to 137 Mhz:


The image is excellent just above my location ( indicated by the yellow + sign ) but image quality decreases as noise increases quickly outside of my location. What is needed is an antenna with a much better gain from a high speed moving satellite that doesn't have signal fade caused by the orientation of the propagated wavefront. While many people have had good results using basic dipole whip antennas, discone antennas, turnstile antennas, and more exotic Lindenblads, nothing seems to perform as well as the Quadrifilar Helix Antenna (QHA) .

Looking at the QHA, it is initially somewhat hard to understand it's design. It is a pair of circularly polarized, half turn, half wavelength helical antennas designed for reception of low-earth polar orbiting satellites. Reading into the documentation for the actual NOAA polar orbiting satellites, they actually use this exact same antenna design for APT transmission on the satellites themselves. After some research, I came across an excellent calculator for designing the antenna. I recently built this antenna using measurements from the calculator and ended up with this:


It's not perfect, but it is designed to specifications. I used thick 4mm copper grounding wire instead of small copper pipe that other designers of these antennas use mostly for ease of assembly. Also in the picture is the RF choke balun, which converts the balanced signal from the antenna to an unbalanced coaxial cable. It is simply four turns of RG-8 around the antenna mast as close to the feed point as possible. For extra gain, I'm using a mini-circuits ZFL-1000LN low noise amplifier between the antenna and receiver. Overall antenna parts cost was about $30 and assembly time took about two hours. I plan on testing the antenna this weekend and I'm looking forward to some good satellite imagery.

Friday, May 22, 2009

POCSAG and FLEX pager reception and decoding

Browsing the 900Mhz band last week, I came across the distinct sound of pager protocols on a handful of frequencies. Years ago I began listening to pagers on the 138Mhz band as my scanner at the time only reached the 500Mhz band as it’s highest frequency. With my ICOM-R7000, I am able to easily browse through the entire 900Mhz band where I have found most of the pager frequencies are located.

The two main protocols used by pagers are POCSAG and FLEX. Both protocols support tone only, numeric and alphanumeric pages at various bit rates. POCSAG uses FSK modulation with a +- 4.5Khz change of the carrier frequency. A +4.5Khz tone is a 0 and a -4.5Khz is a 1. Bit rates of 512 ,1200, and 2400 bits per second are supported. FLEX is another protocol which is newer and also uses FSK modulation. Bit rates are available at 1600, 3200, and 6400 bits per second. A key note to make about both of these protocols is the fact that their data is transmitted in clear text.

The only requirements to decode pager transmissions is a scanner / receiver capable of receiving FM on pager frequencies, ( the low 900Mhz band seems to be the most active) and software that is capable of decoding pager transmissions. The software I use is called PDW, and is freely available. It is capable of receiving both POCSAG and FLEX transmissions in all bit rates including a handful of other protocols.

For an antenna I’m using an outdoor wide-band antenna that has coverage in the 900Mhz band. I’m also utilizing a mini-circuits ZRL-2400LN wide band low noise preamp to help pull in any distant signals, even though it really isn’t necessary as these pager transmissions are fairly strong.

There are several interface methods available; the first is connecting your scanners audio output directly to the input of your sound card. The second involves taking he discriminator output of your scanner and connecting it directly to your soundcards input. The last method involves making an FSK to rs232 level decoder that takes the scanners audio output or discriminator output and converting it to serial data. I have actually had really good results with using the discriminator output of the R7000 and tying it to my sound card.


The ICOM-R7000 does not have a discriminator output, but it is an easy modification to add. The R7000 actually has a ‘spare’ rca connector on the back that can be used for any additional mods you wish to add, and tapping into the discriminator is an easy operation to do. There are instructions all over the place to do this so I won’t describe it here. The discriminator output is key since it provides access to the FSK pager audio before it is passed through filters on the scanner that usually destroy the signal.

I am passing this discriminator output directly to my soundcard line input and have had excellent results. Many people mention that this won’t work for the higher bit rates, but I am successfully decoding FLEX pages even at 6400 bps using this method. I used to use the audio output form my old scanner to my sound cards input with poor results. At best I was able to decode POCSAG at 512 bps. I would still like to make a 2 level or 4 level FSK converter, but I really find it isn’t necessary.

Finding the pager frequencies is fairly easy. There are many lists available around that I found from some searches, although I found many of them to be old and out of date. I had my best results by simply searching around and hearing them. This is better to perform during the day as I found pager transmissions are much more active than at night. I usually start right at 900Mhz and begin tuning up 5Khz at a time. Pagers are easy to find as the tone has a very distinctive sound. Several passes over the band may be required as some of the frequencies will be idle when no transmissions are present. I found the following frequencies to be very active by me:

940.870, 929.295, 929.620, 929.720, 931.340, 929.670, 929.545, 929.845, 931.345, and 929.495.

This may be different in your area, but most of these I believe are nationwide pager networks. Here are some of my results:

( I removed actual names and modified phone numbers as I have no interest in displaying real personal information. )

0389996 00:08:13 20-05-09 FLEX-A ALPHA 6400 MSN 019 hello Message from NOC PCB. 1510016
1424219 00:09:31 20-05-09 FLEX-A ALPHA 6400 THIS IS A TEST PERIODIC PAGE SEQUENTIAL NUMBER 7829
0769357 00:09:33 20-05-09 FLEX-C ALPHA 6400 0769357 00:09:46 20-05-09 FLEX-C ALPHA 6401 es 40 pts, 6 rebs, 4 ast vs. Carmelo Anthony's 39 pts, 6 reb, 4 ast...010243590 00:09:48 20-05-09 FLEX-A ALPHA 6400 801221234545020519203005192245005
010243590 00:10:03 20-05-09 FLEX-A ALPHA 6400 902051234545990519203005192245015
0186743 00:10:03 20-05-09 FLEX-C ALPHA 6400 MONTGOMERY, NJ (SOMERSET) *2ND ALARM* 16 HAMPTON CT. 2ND ALARM REQ ON ARRIVAL FOR THE F/I DWG W/POSS ENTRAP. NJ2
011156517 00:10:22 20-05-09 FLEX-A StNUM 6400 281 555-9405
011319993 00:10:22 20-05-09 FLEX-A StNUM 6400 213 555-4758
0000001 00:10:22 20-05-09 FLEX-A ALPHA 6400 MSN 030 hello Message from NOC PCB. 1111111111
010239056 00:11:39 20-05-09 FLEX-C ALPHA 6400 38767:Host:png,pBg_fcsw_4.png.com Event:nodedown [nvasp] [58]
010248578 00:14:13 20-05-09 FLEX-C ALPHA 6400 Feeder 07Q85 opened 05/20/09-00:03. 3 of the 24 feeders are out of service at FLUSHING NETWORK . [57]
0186742 00:41:01 20-05-09 FLEX-A ALPHA 3201 DV. BULK OF FIRE K/D. CO'S GOING INT FOR SEARCH & O/H. NJ2
0186743
002816630 00:41:37 20-05-09 FLEX-A SH/TONE 3200 520
003951995 00:44:05 20-05-09 FLEX-A ALPHA 3201 MSGW02MOM" CPU is running at 5.50 percent This event was generated by the script: "Exchange ... [88]
003435545 00:48:11 20-05-09 FLEX-A ALPHA 3200 HARD WATER IN CONDENSATE. CALL THE POWERHOUSE 3-7038. PAMS_24.Unack HARD WATER IN CONDENSATE *ALM* High [78]
003951995 00:43:11 20-05-09 FLEX-A ALPHA 3200 Store timed out at the 30 seconds threshold Exchange Server:"MOBMSPF05" MDB:"SG1 (MOBMSPF05)\SG1_Priv1_(MOBMSPF05)" Mailbo
003951995 00:43:22 20-05-09 FLEX-A ALPHA 3201 x:"MOBMSPF05MOM" CPU is running at 2.97 percent This event was generated by the script: ... [82]
002116131 00:07:43 20-05-09 FLEX-C ALPHA 6400 PATIENT - EMERGENCY
SAME
HER EYE WAS OPERATED ON LAST MONTH AND SHE HAS
EXTREME PAIN NOW


The message displayed in PDW consists of the pagers cap code (unique address), time, date, protocol, page type, bit rate, and finally the message. The cap code is the unique id set to each pager. All pagers on a certain frequency receive all pages on that frequency, but they only display pages where its cap code matches the code in the messages. I am seeing pages from a local hospital, sports scores, news, tower information transmissions, business nagios server alerts, other miscellaneous data, and of course pager numbers. It’s quite interesting to see how much information is easily received and decoded.