FAQ

• The config panel asks for user and password!! The user is always admin and the password is the password you configured during the setup process on the config panel itself. Read more on the Ground Station configuraton page.

• I don't remember the password of the config panel!! Don't worry, you can recover your password with one of these methods:

  1. At any time press the PROG_BUTTON of your board or connect the PROG_BUTTON pin to GND for 8 seconds to enter Rescue Mode. In rescue mode your ground station will generate an AP with the name of your station without password and you will be able to use that AP to change the config, including your passwords. The PROG_BUTTON pin depends on the board you are using and it is defined by the board template.
  2. Connect to the serial port of the board using your favourite serial monitor (Platformio, Ardino, Putty...) 115200 baud and send a character 'e'. This will reset your board to default parameters.
  3. Using Platform.io erase the ESP32 flash memory with: pio run --target erase
  4. Use the One click Uploader to reinstall the firmware.

After this you will need to connect to the tinyGS config AP and set all the parameters. Read more on the Ground Station configuration page.

• How can I get the user and password for the MQTT server? We use Telegram as the main communication channel. Join our Community Chat After joining the channel, look or search for the "TinyGS Personal Bot" (It usually sends a welcome message to new members). Sent a message of "/mqtt" and the bot will respond with your MQTT credentials.

• I'm new and I want to get in, what hardware should I buy? First choose the satellites that you want to receive. We recommend 433Mhz since there are more satellites. Also, some satellites like V-R3x only work in 915Mhz band and we expect more in the future. However, recently all 915 satellites become inactive, so it's unlikely to receive 868/915 satellites until late 2021.

• I have a LoRa Board with frequency 433, 868 or 915 MHz can I use it in a different band? Other frequencies wont make the firmware fail but you will probably not be able to receive anything from the satellite, due the matching RF circuits.

• What type of antenna should I use for TinyGS LoRa is an awesome technology and can receive signals under the noise floor. The standard duck or coil antennas that usually come with Heltec or TTGO boards were proven to receive some packets from quite long distances. However, the conditions have to be good to be able to receive with such antennas. In order to have a more reliable groundStation we recommend to build a better tiny antenna. You can read more about the different options on the Antennas page from @judhi.

• I receive a lot of packets that appear as "Unknown" on the tinygs.com website Some satellites transmit on frequencies that are used for other things on earth. Some even use standard LoRa frequiencies so it's normal that not everything that your station receive is from a satellite. Our system is capable of detecting the structure of the packets from the supported satellites, so if a frame is marked as "Unknown" it's probably a terrestrial LoRa packet or interferences from other technologies.

• MQTT connection failed with error: failed, rc=-2 The ground station could not connect to the MQTT server. Check your connection and make sure there is nothing blocking the connection such as a firewall or content blocker. Some users have reported problems with pihole. Adding an exception should solve the problem.

• Screen OLED inverted The OLEd display changes depending on the hour: during the day is white and during the night is black. This change protects the OLED by changing the lit pixels from time to time, otherwise some pixels may burn out sooner. Disabling this feature is not recomended as it will increase the wearout of your display but you can disable it using the advanced parameters setting dnOled to true. Example: {"dnOled":true}

• What does CRC error mean and why doesn't it appear as a received packet The Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC) verifies the integrity of the received packet. A Packet with CRC error is a packet that arrived with wring bytes. Due to de nature of the codification and restrictions from the hardware it's not possible to get decode the payload when there is a CRC error. However, even when a station has not received any data, TinyGS can link CRC errors to real packets received by nearby stations based on reception parameters and time of reception.

• I have a 868/915 LoRa board but it is listening to Norby Currently, your hardware will always be listening in one frequency. Norby was set as the default satellite because currently it is the most reliable one so your board will listen to it by default before the network commands otherwise, but don't worry, with the default configuration, autotune will set your board to listen to the nearest satellite. You can change your autotune settings login in on your station console in tinygs.com

• How do I login on tinyGS to command my station? You have to ask the @tinygs_personal_bot on telegram for a passwordless login link using the command /weblogin after using that link your device will be logged in until you log out. You can use that link in any device: computer, phone or tablet. Check the Radio Tuning Guide for more details.

• I have autotune on but my board is not changing satellite Autotune changes your radio configuration about 5/10 minutes before a satellite is rising above the horizon in your station location. If there is no satellite overhead, it will not change until a compatible satellite is in reach. 99% of the stations use autotune to receive all possible satellites automatically. In case 2 satellites are in reach, the autotune will set every station to listen to the nearest satellite, that way we maximize the possibility to get packets.