Pico Beacon
The Pico Beacon is an APRS based tracking beacon that operates in the UHF 420-450MHz band. The device utilizes a Microchip PIC 18F2525 embedded controller, Motorola M12+ GPS engine, and Analog Devices AD9954 DDS. The device is capable of generating a 1200bps A-FSK and 9600 bps FSK AX.25 compliant APRS (Automatic Position Reporting System) message.
23 Dec 2006, Change include; (1) change printf format width to conform to ANSI standard when new CCS 4.xx compiler released.
10 Jan 2006, Change include; (1) added amplitude control to engineering mode, (2) corrected number of bytes reported in log, (3) add engineering command to set high rate position reports (5 seconds), and (4) corrected size of LOG_COORD block when searching for end of log.
15 Sep 2005, Change include; (1) removed AD9954 setting SDIO as input pin, (2) additional comments and Doxygen tags, (3) integration and test code calculates DDS FTW, (4) swapped bus and reference analog input ports (hardware change), (5) added message that indicates we are reading flash log and reports length, (6) report bus voltage in 10mV steps, and (7) change log type enumerated values to XORed nibbles for error detection.
6 Apr 2005, Change include; (1) corrected tracked satellite count in NMEA-0183 $GPGGA message, (2) Doxygen documentation clean up and additions, and (3) added integration and test code to baseline.
13 Jan 2005, Renamed project and files to Pico Beacon.
15 Nov 2004, Change include; (1) Micro Beacon extreme hardware changes including integral transmitter, (2) PIC18F2525 processor, (3) AD9954 DDS support functions, (4) added comments and formatting for doxygen, (5) process GPS data with native Motorola protocol, (6) generate plain text $GPGGA and $GPRMC messages, (7) power down GPS 5 hours after lock, (8) added flight data recorder, and (9) added diagnostics terminal mode.
30 Jan 2004, Change include; (1) General clean up of in-line documentation, and (2) changed temperature resolution to 0.1 degrees F.
26 Oct 2002, Change include; (1) Micro Beacon II hardware changes including PIC18F252 processor, (2) serial EEPROM, (3) GPS power control, (4) additional ADC input, and (5) LM60 temperature sensor.
5 Dec 2001, Change include; (1) Changed startup message, and (2) applied SEPARATE pragma to several methods for memory usage.
25 Sep 2001, Initial release. Flew ANSR-3 and ANSR-4.
Copyright (c) 2001-2006 Michael Gray, KD7LMO<br>
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA
Provides design details on a variety of the components that make up the Pico Beacon.
Power Consumption
