Radio Telescope

Main program for Penn State Harrisburg radio telescope project.

Control hardware repository: https://github.com/drkntz/radiotelescope-PCB

Embedded firmware repository: https://github.com/drkntz/radiotelescope-firmware

This Python software is forked from UPENN project: https://github.com/UPennEoR/MiniRadioTelescope

Quickstart/onboarding guide for new contributors:

• QUICKSTART.md: Instructions for installing git, vscode, python, and committing to this repository.

General structure of this repository

• The RTLSDR folder relates to the rtl-sdr module, which gets data from the antenna.

  • RTLSDR/installing_pyrtlsdr: Instructions for installing pyrtlsdr, python lib for reading data.

  • RTLSDR/rtlsdr_wrapper.py: Can get raw samples at a frequency and draw a plot.

• The ControlBoard folder relates to the PCB which moves the telescope mount.

  • ControlBoard/port_wrapper.py: Writes/reads bytes from an RT232RL chip over USB. Currently must be run as sudo.

• "earl" is the hostname of the laptop donated to serve as the control platform.

  • earl/installing_earl: Instructions for installing arch, pyrtlsdr, and a GUI on the laptop.

Documentation

Software documentation folder on Google Drive

• astropy_coordinates.py

• RTLSDR/rtlsdr_wrapper.py

• ControlBoard/port_wrapper.py