Beacon

Beacon is a recovery tracker. It sits in the nose cone, and once the rocket is somewhere in a field it pings its position until someone finds it. Should survice thirty days on a single 1s LiPo.

I still have to update this page with information. I'm quite busy with travel and university work, so I have to start working on this project soon. For now I'm going to upload my rough notes below.

Requirements

• Should actively ping its location for up to 15 days. Push to 30 days if possible.
• Lowest power consumption.
• Support photovoltaic cell recharging.
• 20Km of strong connection to ground station.
• Send GPS coordinates and/or localization pings.
• < 600mm^2 PCB.
• Astrocast Astronode S satellite transceiver for satellite uplink and as an alternative to LR-FHSS.

Part selection

• MCU - nRF54L15
• PMIC - nPM1304
• RF - SX1262
• Battery - 1s LiPo
• GNSS IC - ublox m10s (haven't properly yet researched)
• satellite transceiver - Astrocast Astronode S (haven't properly yet researched)

Part justifications are listed below.

SX1262

• just 4.2 mA of active receive current consumption
• Supports LR-FHSS and LoRa
• Lots of documentation and reference designs available.

Astrocast Astronode S

• Provides satellite uplink capabilities
• Can be used as an alternative to LR-FHSS
• Offers global coverage
• Peak power consumption (in TX mode) = 0.35W
• Deep sleep current = less than 500nA

nRF54L15

• Ultra-low-power wireless SoC
• Extended battery life enabled by lower power consumption
• Supports Bluetooth LE, and WiFi (?)

nPM1304

• Has Linear battery charger, Fuel gauge including battery health , Two buck regulators ( output 200mA), and Two LDOs / load switches.
• Two buck regulators Output current: 200 mA Output voltage: 1.0 – 3.3 V 100 mV steps Automatic hysteretic and PWM mode switching, or forced PWM mode Power conversion efficiency up to 93%