Opal Beacon Summary

Opal broadcasts two beacons. Both are at 437.100 MHz.

• Beacon 1 - An AX.25 packet beacon containing Opal's current time stamp and a 2 bit summary of Opal's health. Example beacon:
  
  

  OPAL 0:0009948696 <01>

  "0:0009948696" is the time stamp. It is the number of clock ticks since last hard CPU reset onboard Opal. The number of seconds can be calculated by:
  
  

  seconds = (number of ticks> / ( 4096 )

  The two bit beacon "<01>" is a summary of health. The states correspond to:
  
  

  00 -
  01 -
  10 -
  11 -
  

• Beacon 2 - A continuous wave pulse that encodes the two bit beacon. More to follow (when we're not exhausted!). Check out the paper that was written on it: Development of a Satellite Beacon Receiving Station

Under construction.
For more information contact Jamie Cutler or Prof. Bob Twiggs.