Funcube-Dongle-AUK2011

AMSAT-UK Colloquium 2011 1

FUNcube Dongle

What is the FUNcube Dongle?

• Groundstation receiver for FUNcube

• Primary design requirements:

– Accessible, not intimidating

• For everyone, amateur and non-amateur

– A true turnkey solution

• Zero hardware setup

• Plug in and go

– Low cost

What we had in mind – March 2010

July 2010

August 2010

September 2010CE certification•Low voltage 73/23/EEC, 93/68/EEC, 2006/95/EC•Electromagnetic compatibility 89/336/EEC, 2004/108/EC•Radio and telecommunications terminal equipment, R&TTE 99/5/EC

Reflow oven(!)Test and burn fixture

Fix sensitivityIncrease sample rate to 96kHzRework USB & SMA routing cut outsUSB VID & PIDFrequency setting application

October 2010•Web site blog•User testing•Gain distribution testing•RF testing•Test on Mac OSX, Ubuntu, Windows XP, Vista, 7, 32 & 64 bit•Bootloader

•Second PCB spin•Prepare for assembly

November 2010

• Two assemblers• First boards due early December• Two models announced – Base and Pro

– Base is entry level frequency limited unit for educational outreach, available at FUNcube launch in 2011, <£50

– Pro is a general frequency coverage unit, available Decmeber 2011, £99. Pro model is also funding FUNcube satellite.

• Live telemetry frames received!

December 2010

• One assembler gave up…

– The day after they were meant to deliver

• Christmas 2010 at G6LVB was spent hand building 100 units

• First 35 unit batch sold out in about a minute

• Manual LNA rework required on all units

January 2011

• Second 65 units sold out in about a minute

• Units from second manufacturer failure rate 40%

• 50% of units still hand built

• Third batch of 100 sells out in about a minute.

• Second manufacturer cannot deliver another batch for six weeks

• Third manufacturer instructed

– They can turn around in a week!

February to July 2011

• More regular sales still not managing to maintain stock, selling out in between one and three minutes.

• We discover that Paypal’s maximum transaction rate is 3 per second

• Manufacturing process gradually increased to 150/week.

• Largest single week 250!• Switch from Royal Mail to Fedex for overseas

deliveries• Greatest DX – 219 million km - NASA Stereo B

deep space probe

What did we learn?

• The bad– Manufacturing is a minefield– Paypal– Royal Mail International

• The good– UK manufacturing is the best way– Yield: 97% from manufacturer, 99.9% after

testing – Returns now 0.5%– FUNcube satellite funding now has some £££s– SMA connectors not now the most expensive

part on the BOM!

FUNcube Dongle

• Not just FUNcube!– It covers all narrow band modes, 65MHz to 1,700MHz!– A SoftRock for VHF/UHF/L Band

• Compromises– Cheap surface mount parts do not encourage home

construction or modification– Will not win any prizes for phase noise– VHF selectivity not the best

• Have we succeeded with the design requirements?– For everyone, amateur/academic/professional? Yes!– True plug and play? Yes! eg, No drivers required!– Low cost? Yes!

The future…• Integrated antenna & filter

• We need more Mac SDR software

• Linux/ARM based design for standalone transceiver

• FCC certification

The cast…

• G3WGM – the boss

• G3VZV – the front man

• M0TFO – the cheerleader

• M5AKA – the word on the street

• G8CUB – the enforcer

• G4ULI – the bookie

• G6LVB’s extended family – the associates

• …and everyone globally for their help!

FUNcube Dongle

• Thank you for listening!

• Howard Long G6LVB

• [email protected]