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1. bambax+sDa[view] [source] 2026-02-04 08:38:53
>>jnord+(OP)
This sounds so cool!

> I’m a little puzzled about the balloons’ telemetry messages received on the WSPR network, as they have been few and far between.

But wouldn't there be a way to send messages to Starlink satellites instead of WSPR? Is it a problem of power consumption? (It would be great to be able to transmit images, not just GPS pings).

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2. m4rtin+PWb[view] [source] 2026-02-04 16:53:15
>>bambax+sDa
Starlink is totally oit of picobaloon range by orders of magnitude - we are talking hundreds of mW at most.

At the same time it is true the board (rpi pico usually) could totally support a camera or other high bandwidth instruments - it just does not have the bandwidth to send the data over wspr, possibly with the exception of some flags based on local processing.

AFAIK some poeple have built dual APRS & WSPR pico baloons, but you will still get pictures back only over populated areas due to APRS having in general much shorter range than WSPR.

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