FUNcube Dongle

AMSAT-UK Colloquium 2011

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 2010
CE 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 sensitivity Increase sample rate to 96kHz Rework USB & SMA routing cut outs USB VID & PID Frequency 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 Paypals 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 G6LVBs extended family the associates and everyone globally for their help!

FUNcube Dongle
Thank you for listening! Howard Long G6LVB howard@g6lvb.com