1U Nano Satellite (KU CubeSat)
archivedA 1U CubeSat project — onboard flight software on a Raspberry Pi, a LoRa radio link, and a Qt/QML ground station to track and view telemetry.
cppqtqmlembeddediotraspberry-piloraaerospace
What it does
A 1U nano-satellite (CubeSat) system spanning the whole link: the software that runs onboard the satellite, the radio link that carries data down to earth, and the ground-station app that operators use to command it and read its telemetry.
- Onboard: camera control, GPS, real-time clock, CPU temperature monitoring, and a transceiver, all coordinated by a satellite controller
- Radio: LoRa transmitter/receiver modules for the long-range downlink/uplink
- Ground station: a dashboard showing live telemetry, charts, maps, and the camera feed
Why I built it
An academic CubeSat effort (KU CubeSat, 2021) to design, build, and operate a small satellite end to end — real hardware constraints, real radio budgets, real ground operations.
How it works
- Satellite (KUCubeNanoSatellite): C++ / Qt on a Raspberry Pi handling camera, GPS, RTC, and the transceiver; Arduino sketches drive the LoRa radios
- Ground station (kucube-nanosat2021): Qt / QML app with dashboard, charts, maps, and camera-feed views, talking to the radio over a serial link
What I learned
Working within tight power, size, and bandwidth budgets forces disciplined engineering — every byte over the LoRa link and every watt on the board has to earn its place.