Egypt SatNOGs Non-Rotary Build

Project Overview

Project: A SatNOGs non-rotary omnidirectional ground station with two Power Distribution Units for a future rotator system.
Company: Outlyer
Timeline: Feb – Sep 25, 2025 (~30 weeks)

Introduction

This blog will take you through all the challenges that turned a 5–6 week project into a 30-week simple ground station. By now I assume that the reader knows what SatNOGs is, and if not, you can look it up. Before getting started, I would like to genuinely thank Ralph, the founder of Outlyer.space, for this unique opportunity — I doubt I could have found it anywhere else. Not only did I learn about satellites, antennas, and ground stations, I also understood how “funny” it is to ship a simple electronic item to Egypt.

First Build

On the first build attempt, I was new to SatNOGs and everything related, but following the basic omnidirectional build from the SatNOGs tutorial made it really simple https://wiki.satnogs.org/Omnidirectional_Station_How_To.
The plan was simple: connect an omnidirectional antenna to a general-purpose LNA, which is connected to a NooElec SDR on the other side, and finally all connected to a Raspberry Pi 5.

Mount everything on a DeskPi RackMate, mount the Raspberry Pi on the DeskPi KL-P24 shelf, and finally connect everything to the DeskPi DC PDU Lite.

Issues

Shipping

While it might seem simple, there were two major issues. The first was Egyptian customs — they were doing a great job reviewing the products shipped; however, that wasn’t in our favor since shipping a single product would take up to a month.

Power

The second major issue was that the DeskPi PDU had a voltage drop of around 0.4 V per output channel due to the safety diodes connected, and that not being specified in the wiki led me to use an ammeter to read voltage and current across output channels to solve the issue of why my Pi was not booting.

Initially I thought not enough amps were being supplied, so I purchased a 10 A 5 V adapter, which obviously did not solve the problem. After contacting DeskPi support, I was informed that the PDU was not designed for 5 V. They recommended checking out the 52Pi 4 USB-Channel 5 V Power Supply Module.

New Build: Dual PDU

In the new build, I attached the 52Pi PDU unit to the first PDU so they could both feed one another. The new PDU and Raspberry Pi are mounted securely on a DeskPi DP-0039 Bracket. This new build allowed isolation of power to all 5 V components while making use of the PDU we had already bought for future development.

Finally, the final build of this long journey is ready to capture its first observation.

Performance on NOAA Satellite Reception

As expected from the omnidirectional antenna, even being on the 5th floor I wasn’t able to capture a meaningful signal. However, a faint signal is detected and can be seen by eye.

Useful Links

SatNOGs Ground Station