[HN Gopher] Tech startup connects to two satellites in orbit fro...
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Tech startup connects to two satellites in orbit from Earth via
Bluetooth
Author : rmason
Score : 32 points
Date : 2024-05-12 20:28 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.techradar.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.techradar.com)
| rwasco wrote:
| How does it work?
| Rinzler89 wrote:
| Via Bluetooth
| umeshunni wrote:
| So it doesn't work?
| Rinzler89 wrote:
| It works at getting VC money.
| dmckeon wrote:
| What return paths for data are available? Also, wait till the the
| QAnon folks hear about this - they will add it to their
| 5g/vaccine/nanochip mythos, and start keeping their phones in
| Faraday pouches. /eyeroll
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| No need to bring up the second half of your comment on this
| forum. Who cares?
| trhway wrote:
| >What return paths for data are available?
|
| One can imagine that the satellite would carry a large phased
| array, similar to the ones used on cell towers, only larger and
| more powerful. Would cost a ton.
| throwaway657656 wrote:
| The closing statement in the article was unexpected "With nearly
| five billion Bluetooth devices sold annually, the impact of this
| breakthrough could be huge".
|
| It's one thing to use 2.4GHz spectrum in orbit between two
| satellites where there probably isn't much interference. That's
| interesting/cool. It's another thing to imply a BT consumer
| device on earth can connect to a satellite which seems like
| grossly misleading claim.
| Rygian wrote:
| The title I see right now is "connects to two satellites in
| orbit _from Earth_ " (as opposed to "between each other" I
| guess).
|
| "Hubble's approach directly tackles these problems by enabling
| standard Bluetooth devices to connect to their satellite
| network without cellular reception simply with a software
| update" towards the middle of the article.
| mafuyu wrote:
| Yeah, when this press release was making the rounds a few days
| ago, I tried to dig up more info, and didn't find much. It
| seems like they're aiming to connect terrestrial BT devices to
| satellites? I just don't see how it could work.
|
| Maybe the actual tech they're shooting for is to wrap the BT
| protocol or modulate it up to blast at satellites? Then you
| could enable connectivity for existing BT sensor networks and
| such. They explicitly say that it doesn't require a hardware
| retrofit, only firmware, though. I suppose you could hit some
| sort of harmonic on a 2.4GHz antenna, but that would be very
| dependent on the frontend and antenna design, and the SNR would
| probably suck. Something doesn't add up.
|
| Conceptually, I'm also not really sure if the pitch makes
| sense. Sure, let's say you can do firmware patches to BT
| chipsets, but was that the expensive/hard part? Does the BT
| protocol and spec make sense in the context of hitting a
| satellite? It's clearly not designed for it in terms of
| latencies, airtime, etc.
| BearScale wrote:
| Two satellites? I wonder if one is a very sensitive receiver and
| the other a transmitter or they trade off roles.
| BearScale wrote:
| Looking at their blog it seems like it's receive only. I wonder
| what their firmware does to make existing chipsets compatible.
| thomasqbrady wrote:
| "It's says it's'paired' but not 'connected,' but the manual uses
| those words interchangeably..."
|
| "Do you see a 'forget satellite' button?"
| yieldcrv wrote:
| they claim that via a software update existing devices can
| connect to their network. but by software update, they mean
| firmware update at the chip level.
|
| this article is apparently about a proof of concept to follow up
| with claims they have made previously for their funding round -
| where they had simply _planned_ to launch a satellite to show
| this off. so now they 've shown it off.
|
| but if you were curious about any revolution or technical
| details, there are not any in any of their blog posts or this
| article.
|
| its interesting but probably does more harm than good for them.
| the technical limitations aren't present, they probably have no
| moat for what they can do, or its all entirely bullshit.
| fren6 wrote:
| Path loss for 2.4 GHz at 600km is 155dB. BLE tx power is 10dBm,
| sensitivity is -103dBm. There is 155-113=42dB missing.
|
| I guess they get 21dB from directional antenna, another 21dB from
| message coding (essentially repeating each bit 128 times to
| improve SNR)?
| danw1979 wrote:
| Please enter the passcode "0000" on the device "SATELLITE_2"
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Why does it always ask me to do this and then SATELLITE_2 never
| actually asks for a passcode?!
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(page generated 2024-05-12 23:00 UTC)