Uploaded April 2026 | Updated September 2026, 16 hours ago
This is the full recording of the Open Research Institutes Projects Meetup for March 31, 2026, where team members discussed recent progress and ongoing work across multiple projects, followed immediately by open discussion ("Office Hours").
Aaron reported delivering SD card images for ZC102, ZC706, and Libre SDR with documentation (yay!), and is working on test applications and adding receive/transmit functionality to the images.
Paul and Michelle shared significant progress on the Opulent Voice project, including successful over-the-air voice communication between two houses after resolving a critical bug in the FPGA bit alignment that had been causing low output power from the Libre SDR. This bug has been in there for months, but was hidden by conducted tests in the lab not requiring any significant output power.
Oscar presented detailed results from his space mission experiments at University of Puerto Rico, demonstrating a reliable 13-watt amplifier that successfully transmitted signals through the ionosphere to 160 kilometers altitude and back, with data showing the payload maintained stable operation despite temperature fluctuations.
Michelle described MDT-SIC work for AMSAT-UK, with significant steps forward on that open source project. Currently existing on development boards wired together through an SPI bus, it needs volunteers that can turn it into a LEO ready PCB form factor for the FUNCube+ satellite.
The team also discussed progress on the Earth-Venus-Earth (EVE) communication project, where Michelle presented updated link analysis showing improved results after fixing a sign error in the calculations, reducing the required correlation time from 13 hours to under a minute. This result needs a detailed review.
The conversation ended with discussions about upcoming demonstrations at B-Sides on April 4th and future work on multi-stream COBS protocols for improved bandwidth utilization, and further open discussion.
This is the full recording of the Open Research Institutes Projects Meetup for March 31, 2026, where team members discussed recent progress and ongoing work across multiple projects, followed immediately by open discussion ("Office Hours").
Aaron reported delivering SD card images for ZC102, ZC706, and Libre SDR with documentation (yay!), and is working on test applications and adding receive/transmit functionality to the images.
Paul and Michelle shared significant progress on the Opulent Voice project, including successful over-the-air voice communication between two houses after resolving a critical bug in the FPGA bit alignment that had been causing low output power from the Libre SDR. This bug has been in there for months, but was hidden by conducted tests in the lab not requiring any significant output power.
Oscar presented detailed results from his space mission experiments at University of Puerto Rico, demonstrating a reliable 13-watt amplifier that successfully transmitted signals through the ionosphere to 160 kilometers altitude and back, with data showing the payload maintained stable operation despite temperature fluctuations.
Michelle described MDT-SIC work for AMSAT-UK, with significant steps forward on that open source project. Currently existing on development boards wired together through an SPI bus, it needs volunteers that can turn it into a LEO ready PCB form factor for the FUNCube+ satellite.
The team also discussed progress on the Earth-Venus-Earth (EVE) communication project, where Michelle presented updated link analysis showing improved results after fixing a sign error in the calculations, reducing the required correlation time from 13 hours to under a minute. This result needs a detailed review.
The conversation ended with discussions about upcoming demonstrations at B-Sides on April 4th and future work on multi-stream COBS protocols for improved bandwidth utilization, and further open discussion.
