Weekly Newsletter - September 21, 2025

Highlights

Technical Problems

• Cencinoit was having trouble seeing satellites after configuration and was also not receiving the web login email after requesting it. Stefan/OE6ISP suggested using the /weblogin command in the personal bot to get the link. 🔗
• HZ1MW asked if replacing the LilyGO piece would cause data loss. Stefan/OE6ISP clarified that using the same name requires the previous hardware to be offline for 24 hours, or admin unlocking. 🔗
• gavarres reported receiving only bad CRC packets when trying to receive Connectaiot sats with a Heltec Lora v2 and a Yagi antenna. Stefan/OE6ISP suggested that the location might be too westerly and advised to watch to the east. Stefan/OE6ISP shared a photo of his antenna from Aliexpress, and gavarres shared a photo of his antenna. Stefan/OE6ISP suggested turning off the servos and controllers due to noise, and mentioned removing controllers improved sensitivity. Stefan/OE6ISP later emphasized the importance of checking cables for issues, sharing a photo of a broken pigtail cable as an example. 🔗
  
  
  
• Crapulard inquired about the higher number of CRC errors with an 868MHz board compared to a 433MHz setup, despite adapting the ground plane. stefan/oe6isp suggested that this could be due to noise in the EU SRD band and potentially interference from weather stations. stefan/oe6isp mentioned that higher frequencies generally cause more CRC errors due to signal loss, Doppler shift, and interference. szmarcin added that commercial satellites might use beamforming, affecting signal strength. stefan/oe6isp speculated about MIMO antennas and the difficulty in obtaining detailed technical information from commercial satellites, advising against excessive effort on the topic. crapulard asked stefan/oe6isp about his weather station setup, and stefan/oe6isp described his setup using a T-BEAM and a temp/humidity sensor for LoRA APRS on 70cm. crapulard then asked if he could DM stefan/oe6isp, to which stefan/oe6isp agreed. 🔗
• Boris requested help with the pin configuration for ESP32 + LoRa RA-02 SX1278. Helmi asked for more details about the wiring, as Boris didn’t have a diagram and needed guidance on connecting the modules. Helmi suggested looking into the source code on GitHub for examples. Notsure7 advised selecting a line that matches the specific ESP32 and SX12.. setup, and suggested starting with OLED for visual confirmation. Boris later reported a radio error 2, which Helmi attributed to an incorrect configuration. Boris mentioned trying all variants but the ESP32 couldn’t initialize the LoRa module and will check the module with another example. Helmi asked about the signals of the RA-02 being used. Boris noted the absence of an ESP32 + SX1278 combination in the configuration file and web configuration, recalling its existence last year. Helmi clarified that many configs with SX1278 exist, and mentioned that TTGO Lora32 V1 and V2, as well as TBeam, use this configuration. Helmi added that all boards with a “1” in his 7X? column use a SX1278. 🔗
  https://github.com/G4lile0/tinyGS/blob/beta/tinyGS/src/ConfigManager/ConfigManager.cpp
• Jules was having trouble accessing the admin page of their TinyGS receiver after moving it. They encountered an ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED error when trying to access it via its local IP address and had not received a response after requesting a weblogin. Several users offered suggestions, including checking browser and network settings, ensuring the station is connected to the router, and verifying the DNS configuration. It was also suggested that client isolation on the router could be the cause. It was highlighted that the local web login is always ‘admin’ and the password defined in the config, and that all firmware versions have web server functionality. G4lile0 suggested that Jules might have lost access to his previous account due to inactivity and recommended recovery via serial connection to obtain the web login URL and register an email address. Jules later mentioned they would connect the receiver to a PC to gather more information. 🔗
  

Share your setup

• Ryan asked about the difference between receiving a confirmed packet and receiving a telemetry packet, wondering how to relate telemetry packets to specific pings. k4kdr clarified that current satellites don’t respond to uplinks, so there’s no relation. stefan/oe6isp explained that confirmed packets are assigned to a satellite, while telemetry packets have known content that can be decoded. ryan clarified that a ‘ping’ refers to a recorded packet and asked how to identify telemetry packets efficiently. stefan/oe6isp advised parsing the received data or checking the parsed view, noting it varies by satellite and shared a link to decoders. stefan/oe6isp also shared an image of parsed data. 🔗
  https://t.me/c/1448773154/78482/90790
  
• PE2BZ shared an observation about their station’s performance after lowering their tower from 14 to 8 meters due to strong winds and then raising it back. They planned to monitor the average performance in the upcoming days. G4lile0 suggested considering the increasing number of packets sent by Tianqui satellites and provided a link to a station focused on Tianqi for comparison. They also mentioned that Tianqui sats can be removed in the statistics selector. Stefan/OE6ISP commented that higher isn’t always better for satellite reception, as it can increase noise and reduce ground effect, sharing that their station is only 170cm above ground. 🔗
  https://app.tinygs.com/station/IK2CIR@5684496920
  https://app.tinygs.com/station/OE6ISP_2@1760298214
  
• PE2BZ asked about Stefan/OE6ISP’s antenna setup, impressed by the numbers achieved. Stefan/OE6ISP responded that it was a 1/4 groundplane homemade antenna and shared a photo of it. 🔗
  
• Aleksander from AGH_Skylink, asked for antenna recommendations for 433MHz, mentioning a ground-level setup with west and north sky views and inquired about the benefits of circular polarization. 🔗
• Stefan/OE6ISP advised that the antenna choice depends on the purpose, suggesting a ground plane or QFH/eggbeater antenna. He also mentioned using a tracked Yagi for HYPE downlinks and provided a link to his QRZ page for more antenna information. Aleksander then inquired about HYPE’s dataframes, to which Stefan/OE6ISP responded that he made several attempts to contact HYPE after signal loss in March, but without success. Stefan/OE6ISP also mentioned that the latest log entries from HYPE seem to be lost in the TinyGS database, and G4lile0 replied that the logs exist but need to be manually moved to the inactive section. Stefan/OE6ISP confirmed that there was likely no activity after the CME in March and it’s not worth any effort. G4lile0 added that he wants to add something like 1% of time to follow inactive objects still in orbit for future autotune algorithm. 🔗
  https://www.qrz.com/db/OE6ISP
  https://t.me/c/1448773154/78468/174155

General

• ieddev asked why one unit on a high antenna receives only telemetry packets while another on a low antenna also receives FSK packets. stefan/oe6isp explained that only SX126x chips can receive FSK, while SX127x are LoRa only, and FSK needs more gain. ieddev then shared results from different Lora modules, and stefan/oe6isp confirmed the expected behavior. ieddev mentioned working on an Az_EL rotor and data scraping. ieddev noted cable differences between the high and low antennas, and stefan/oe6isp discussed cable losses and preamp usage. ieddev described his antenna setup, and asked stefan/oe6isp about using NiceRF Lora modules with an ESP32 as a TinyGS unit. stefan/oe6isp expressed reservations about the effort involved. helmi mentioned using EByte modules with ESP32 and standard firmware. ieddev then asked helmi about using an ESP32 devboard with the ebyte module and webflasher, and megazaic stated that they always use Arduino IDE, and shared a link. helmi clarified that no new firmware is needed, and different pin assignments can be changed using a custom board template. notsure7 added that compiling is only needed for unsupported chips like the c3, which may have WiFi problems. 🔗
  https://t.me/c/1448773154/1/179913
• JL expressed greetings from Panama and inquired about the possibility of expanding TinyGS to satellites using optical communication, showing interest in potential work or interest in this area. 🔗
• megazaic shared several images of a board, possibly suggesting it for use within the TinyGS setup. 🔗
  
  
  
• LU1HVK reported the installation of an external antenna. 🔗
  
• Notsure7 discussed station setups, mentioning that all stations run on cheap C3s and custom PCBs are arriving for that module. He also noted that CR7BTM_137MHz was modded with a TCXO, possibly being the only VHF station with this modification. However, the station is only getting half the expected packets due to being indoors, with an LNA upgrade in progress. 🔗
• Crapulard asked what the yellow circle/dot on the map represents. Helmi responded that it’s the region where packets were received in the past. S54LD asked for a picture, and Helmi provided one. 🔗
  
• SV2HWM reported receiving a packet from Astroline-3 that wasn’t showing up in the last 30 days graph and also mentioned a packet from FSKL5695-13 with missing details. RA3TOX reported having the same situation on all receivers. G4lile0 clarified that Astroline-3 is the same as FSKL5695-13 and provided a link to the satellite’s page. SV2HWM thanked him for the clarification. 🔗
  https://app.tinygs.com/satellite/FSKL5695-13
  
  

Beta Firmware Testing

• Andre reported that packets from SAMSAT-IONOSPHERE (254 bytes) were accepted by a new ground station locally but not displayed on the TinyGS webpage. G4lile0 asked for the station’s name. Later, G4lile0 explained that packets with frame errors are considered CRC_ERROR and appear as ‘unknown’ on the TinyGS station webpage, providing links to example packets. Andre clarified that the issue concerned the 12 packets without error messages that were not being displayed. 🔗
  https://app.tinygs.com/packet/01996877-bf7a-7757-98d4-9c96cfde5158
  https://app.tinygs.com/packet/01996877-afd9-75b5-84da-504738fc5b2e
  https://app.tinygs.com/packet/01996877-a043-742a-98de-0631f2060c3d
• G4lile0 initially suspected a failure in the kaitai parser and was investigating it further. Later, after checking the parser with a received packet, he found that even if the packet length and structure didn’t match the SAMSAT-IONOSPHERE satellite, the parser didn’t fail. He also shared related images. 🔗
  
  
• Andre found the information useful for future improvements and switched to SAMSAT in manual mode because the station was commanded to listen to another non-FSK satellite. He mentioned a potential server overload or other problems and that he needs to disassemble the station temporarily to make it more compact. 🔗

Featured Conversations

• Users discussed troubleshooting techniques for satellite reception, including checking cable connections and minimizing noise from antenna controllers.
• The community shared experiences with different antenna setups, including Yagi antennas from Aliexpress, and discussed optimal positioning for receiving signals from specific satellites.
• Several users reported issues accessing their station dashboards following a maintenance period, prompting a response from the TinyGS team to investigate.
• The community discussed potential causes for increased CRC errors when using 868MHz boards compared to 433MHz setups, including noise in the SRD band, Doppler shift, and potential beamforming by commercial satellites.
• Differences in packet reception between high and low-mounted antennas were explored, with a focus on the impact of cable losses, antenna types, and chip capabilities (SX126x vs. SX127x).

What’s next

Join the TinyGS Telegram channel to participate in these discussions and contribute to the project. Your experiences and insights can help others build and improve their stations!