Every now and then I scan the airwaves with my Kenwood TS-590S for some chill music and this last sunday I stumbled upon 5890 kHz AM where radio Batavia was playing its oldie tunes.
The DJ was a dutchmen telling us he was transmitting from his big ship on a very harsh North Sea.
Just after explaining how proud he was of his new huge antenna system that reached the whole of Europe, (and it has to be big on 5890 kHz!) he reported an unknown ship on the horizon.
Binoculars scanned the horizon revealing it was the navy and it headed their way fast. A radio contact with the approaching ship confirmed the navy was coming their way to board the ship.
A light panic became audible in his voice.
Many tiny satellites have been launched a short while ago and most work as planned. Only one little Cube-sat was lost.
Its makers (4 German guys in a garage) called it WREN. Its workings are simple. It snaps pictures with its camera on command and sends it down with SSTV on the 70cm band by command. Its like having a wireless web-cam in space. A real cool web-cam.
Only...., this one got lost. Its somewhere up there al-right but there is no signal where its makers, now slowly getting depressed, search for one.
Now its makers ask us to help them out and get things going again. So here it is.
How to hack your own satellite.
Use it to photograph .... well anything from way up there. Maybe make a snapshot of that UFO you know must be out there. Then send the data down to your computer and share it with the world.
WREN
The frequency this baby runs on is 437,405 MHz +/- 10 kHz Doppler-Shift where it sends its pictures in SSTV and also has its uplink.
Its location is erm.... somewhere around the earth. (They hope.) There are some reports of amateurs that heard WREN but its appearances are shrouded in mist.
To announce it is there, ready and waiting, the satellite sends 1.6 seconds in AFSK. It sounds like: "pipipipipipipipipipip" Then it waits for 6 minutes for a signal.
The signal is simple and any HAM can do this. It waits for a silent FM signal and Morse-like code. (So just keying the mike by hand will do.)
1 = long 0 = short
110011 = Activate (wait for answers within 2 seconds)
11111 = Camera on
110 = Snapshot/Thumbnail (make image with 12x14 Pixels)
110100 = SSTV send in Mode Martin-1 with 320x240 Pixels
No, there is no self destruct code.
Now first activate, then put the camera on, then make the snapshots or full size pictures. If doing it the wrong way around the satellite goes to sleep mode. So don’t mess this up.
By the way, you’ve got about ten to max. 15 minutes to activate, turn on camera and download the image, before the cube-sat is out of reach. Its not only the coolest web-cam, its also the fastest one.
And don’t forget to Email those Germans to tell them WREN is still alive and really lighten up their day.
UB4UAD screen shot of WREN signal received Nov 26, 2013 at 06:47:13 UT
