Teardown Session 43: Zeke Wheeler and Satellite Tracking
** Many thanks to this Teardown Session's sponsor: Qorvo! **
In this Teardown Session, Crowd Supply's Helen Leigh talks with Zeke Wheeler (KJ7NLL) about satellite tracking and ham radio.
Key Moments
00:20 Crowd Supply News and What's New
02:56 Shoutout to our sponsor, Qorvo!
03:43 Introducing Zeke
05:06 Zeke's inspiration; contacting the ISS
05:37 The trials of Ham radio certification testing
08:20 How Zeke learned to design and build PCBs
08:57 Zeke's first project and the Qorvo chip that he used
12:02 Zeke's LNA boards and designs
13:01 A rocket board diplexer
14:00 A melting robot board
15:52 An LNA for communicating with OreSat
17:32 Antenna geometry mini-seminar!
19:39 Rubber duck antennas
20:33 A breakdown of Zeke's satellite tracker
25:36 Gear design in TinkerCAD
34:09 KiCad schematics
36:01 Golden conductive rings PCB design
41:03 Visual code blocks for 3D design
43:40 Designing for elegance
46:01 A look at the tracker's C code
52:27 Lego versions of satellite trackers
57:24 Zeke's goals, future projects
59:40 A hand-etched early board
1:00:54 Final thoughts
About our Guest
Zeke has been making waves on the engineering circuit. He has been involved in a four-year ham radio project to contact the International Space Station using homemade antennas and circuit boards, and built a Lego Satellite Tracker that can track the Oresat 0 satellite, (or any satellite you plug into it.) Zeke has a popular YouTube channel (@KJ7NLL) and is now in the final stages of programming his original 3D printed desktop satellite tracker to present at the NWSE science fair at PSU in April. Zeke is 12 years old, and loves to share his projects.
Links & Resources
Zeke's YouTube Channel: / @kj7nll
OreSat Ground Station campaign: https://www.crowdsupply.com/psas/oresat
OreSat home: https://www.oresat.org/
Qorvo RF Accelerator: https://www.crowdsupply.com/qorvo/rf-...
Qorvo home: https://www.qorvo.com/
Tinkercad: https://www.tinkercad.com/
Teardown 2024: https://www.crowdsupply.com/teardown/...
About the Teardown Sessions
Welcome to The Teardown Sessions, a series of interviews and hands-on learning sessions with Crowd Supply creators, staff, and lots of special guests. Crowd Supply is the crowdfunding platform of choice for engineers, hackers, designers, and idealists. We help them with the funding and support they need to deliver respectful, thoughtfully crafted, open source hardware to their delighted backers.
Come on by and see what our creators are making: https://www.crowdsupply.com.
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