SpaceX Texas launch site Discussion and Updates - Thread 3

[Nomadd]

Nomadd what's the actual prospects of us setting up a webcam on a pole in your front yard?

I'm thinking about it. Ground level wouldn't be much good because of the haze and heat distortion most days.
 It's better if you're 20 feet up. I use to use 2 10' sections of heavy 2" electrical conduit for my homemade scada remotes in the oil field. Plant a heavy, 6' piece of angle steel half way in the ground for a mount and a person can stand the thing up or take it down on his own. With nothing but a small camera and a little TV antenna, the pole will handle hurricane winds easy.
 The main problem at the moment is the "web" part of webcam. There isn't any out here except for cellphone. Satellite internet isn't any cheaper than LTE and isn't nearly as good, so nobody gets that. Two new conduits are in as far as the gas well a few hundred yards down the road, so we're waiting to see what they do with those.

[JamesH65]

Nomadd what's the actual prospects of us setting up a webcam on a pole in your front yard?

I'm thinking about it. Ground level wouldn't be much good because of the haze and heat distortion most days.
 It's better if you're 20 feet up. I use to use 2 10' sections of heavy 2" electrical conduit for my homemade scada remotes in the oil field. Plant a heavy, 6' piece of angle steel half way in the ground for a mount and a person can stand the thing up or take it down on his own. With nothing but a small camera and a little TV antenna, the pole will handle hurricane winds easy.
 The main problem at the moment is the "web" part of webcam. There isn't any out here except for cellphone. Satellite internet isn't any cheaper than LTE and isn't nearly as good, so nobody gets that. Two new conduits are in as far as the gas well a few hundred yards down the road, so we're waiting to see what they do with those.

Actions isn't really going to be 'awesome', doesn't need to be realtime, so you could get away with a timelapse system. Download to laptop, then convert the JPEGS to a movie and upload to YouTube when you have bandwidth elsewhere. Raspberry Pi on a pole, 32GB SD card, needs some sort of power supply. 32GB gives you over 12k frames. What you do with those is up to you, one a minute gives a LOT of video. Add some timing so it only takes frames during working hours.

[mvpel]

Powering a Raspberry Pi from Solar Power

This post will walk you though how to protect your Raspberry Pi while powering it from a solar-powered system, and provide some tips for reducing the power consumption. Our desired goal is to power the Raspberry Pi with only a 9W solar panel (which you’ll see is not easy considering how power-hungry these boards are), so we’ll provide you with the know-how and tools necessary to reduce the power consumption.

[JamesH65]

Powering a Raspberry Pi from Solar Power

This post will walk you though how to protect your Raspberry Pi while powering it from a solar-powered system, and provide some tips for reducing the power consumption. Our desired goal is to power the Raspberry Pi with only a 9W solar panel (which you’ll see is not easy considering how power-hungry these boards are), so we’ll provide you with the know-how and tools necessary to reduce the power consumption.

You could get away with an A+, lower power SoC than the current top models. Pi camera takes about 250mA when running - they are quite hungry - the H264 encoder about 75mA.

Or just run a power cable up the pole. Stick Wifi dongle on the board, set up as access point, and you would be able to connect to it to download stuff.

[mlindner]

Powering a Raspberry Pi from Solar Power

This post will walk you though how to protect your Raspberry Pi while powering it from a solar-powered system, and provide some tips for reducing the power consumption. Our desired goal is to power the Raspberry Pi with only a 9W solar panel (which you’ll see is not easy considering how power-hungry these boards are), so we’ll provide you with the know-how and tools necessary to reduce the power consumption.

I wouldn't bother with a solar power system, just run an outdoor extension cord up the pole and wire it in to the breaker box in the house.

[acsawdey]

Powering a Raspberry Pi from Solar Power

This post will walk you though how to protect your Raspberry Pi while powering it from a solar-powered system, and provide some tips for reducing the power consumption. Our desired goal is to power the Raspberry Pi with only a 9W solar panel (which you’ll see is not easy considering how power-hungry these boards are), so we’ll provide you with the know-how and tools necessary to reduce the power consumption.

I wouldn't bother with a solar power system, just run an outdoor extension cord up the pole and wire it in to the breaker box in the house.

Or do something like this and run power + ethernet over a standard ethernet cable:

http://astrobeano.blogspot.com/2012/10/24v-passive-poe-for-raspberry-pi.html

40 meters should be enough, right?

[Dave G]

Space industry insider speaks on ‘Creating New Space City’

Like Silicon Valley, Boston, the UK and Europe, Brownsville is faced with the chore of having to figure out what commercial opportunities the privately fueled “new space” sector will spawn and how to take advantage of them.

That’s according to Sean Casey, managing director of the Silicon Valley Space Center in Palo Alto, California, and keynote speaker at Tuesday’s “Project Space: STARGATE TALKS” gathering at the Brownsville Event Center. The name of his talk was “CreatingNewSpaceCity.”

SpaceX, which expects to begin launching rockets from BocaChicaBeach in 2018, represents the top tier of the new-space sector. Casey said the sector is full of opportunities for payload specialists, rocket developers, entrepreneurs, students and professionals, and that Brownsville can be a player.

“SpaceX launching rockets is about access to space,” he said. “Once you’re in space you’re like, ‘OK, now what are we going to do? What are the advantages of that?’”

STARGATE is the commercial arm of the Center for Advanced Radio Astronomy, part of the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, and is a public-private partnership among SpaceX, UTRGV and the governor’s office.

“The facilities that SpaceX is providing are going to reduce the cost of access to space,” Casey said. “As you reduce the cost of access to space, a larger number of people can participate in those endeavors.”

[DanielW]

Powering a Raspberry Pi from Solar Power

This post will walk you though how to protect your Raspberry Pi while powering it from a solar-powered system, and provide some tips for reducing the power consumption. Our desired goal is to power the Raspberry Pi with only a 9W solar panel (which you’ll see is not easy considering how power-hungry these boards are), so we’ll provide you with the know-how and tools necessary to reduce the power consumption.

I wouldn't bother with a solar power system, just run an outdoor extension cord up the pole and wire it in to the breaker box in the house.

Or do something like this and run power + ethernet over a standard ethernet cable:

http://astrobeano.blogspot.com/2012/10/24v-passive-poe-for-raspberry-pi.html

40 meters should be enough, right?

As seeing how basically the whole world knows nomadd's address, I propose that anyone with a good idea of how to get a webcam up and running should start sending him hardware.

[Dave G]

The main problem at the moment is the "web" part of webcam. There isn't any out here except for cellphone. Satellite internet isn't any cheaper than LTE and isn't nearly as good, so nobody gets that. Two new conduits are in as far as the gas well a few hundred yards down the road, so we're waiting to see what they do with those.

The RFP for the fiber run says it's being funded as part of the Stargate project, from the University of Texas in Brownsville to the SpaceX control center and launch site.  No mention of a local drop in Boca Chica Village.

Specifically, the RFP says:

Upon completion, the entire cable system will be the property of University. No other fiber strands will be installed in the University infrastructure.

But who knows?  Anything can happen.

In the event that they don't add wired internet service to Boca Chica Village, you could buy an LTE router with an external antenna.

[Nomadd]

 There's a pedestal at the end of the conduits near the village marked "University of Texas". There are also new AT&T splice pedestals along the route. I never did see how they ran those new conduits a mile or so at a time without digging, but assume they either pulled them through the big, 5" AT&T conduit or the old water line. The runs are together and not on both sides of the highway like the original proposal. So, there's a possibility the runs they've made are one UT and one AT&T with the second (protected conduit, whatever that means) UT one still to be done on the south side of the road. If they pulled the two conduits through the AT&T conduit, they might be using one to replace the existing phone company lines.

[rcoppola]

What are the chances AT&T will set up Hot Spots and repeaters and blanket the village and surrounding area with WiFi. Visitors and employees will be in and around the village, no? Especially when that sites becomes active, the population will increase as will the importance of a wide, consistent, strong signal.

In the North East, albeit a more dense population center, our Cable company has essentially built out a WiFi network made up of thousands of Hot Spots that I can practically access anywhere within a 50 mile radius. As long as I have a subscription to the service.

[meberbs]

There's a pedestal at the end of the conduits near the village marked "University of Texas". There are also new AT&T splice pedestals along the route. I never did see how they ran those new conduits a mile or so at a time without digging, but assume they either pulled them through the big, 5" AT&T conduit or the old water line. The runs are together and not on both sides of the highway like the original proposal. So, there's a possibility the runs they've made are one UT and one AT&T with the second (protected conduit, whatever that means) UT one still to be done on the south side of the road. If they pulled the two conduits through the AT&T conduit, they might be using one to replace the existing phone company lines.

There are some other options to lay new cables underground without digging a whole trench:

I have seen this used to lay new internet cables before. The machines can dig a tunnel for a cable right under roads without having to dig up the road.

[launchwatcher]

The runs are together and not on both sides of the highway like the original proposal. So, there's a possibility the runs they've made are one UT and one AT&T with the second (protected conduit, whatever that means)

Generally the cables include multiple fibers or fiber pairs.   

"protected" sounds like it could refer to some form of armor on the conduit, but it's also common to have "protection" circuits which are backup paths -- preferably taking a different route, often forming a bidirectional ring.

Multiple fibers in the same conduit can be used to protect against equipment failures on the ends but that isn't ideal when your threat model also includes rogue backhoes or the occasional rogue rocket...

[the_other_Doug]

The runs are together and not on both sides of the highway like the original proposal. So, there's a possibility the runs they've made are one UT and one AT&T with the second (protected conduit, whatever that means)

Generally the cables include multiple fibers or fiber pairs.   

"protected" sounds like it could refer to some form of armor on the conduit, but it's also common to have "protection" circuits which are backup paths -- preferably taking a different route, often forming a bidirectional ring.

Multiple fibers in the same conduit can be used to protect against equipment failures on the ends but that isn't ideal when your threat model also includes rogue backhoes or the occasional rogue rocket...

I'm assuming the site doesn't have the fire ant problem that helped to doom the SCSC?  If not, maybe the "protected" line is armored against being eaten into by such things?

[bocachicagal]

A Spacex representative had stated that the Village would be provided with internet service. This is being provided as SpaceX wants to be a good community member and that the fiber optics had to be ran out to the Launch Site. 

[rocx]

A Spacex representative had stated that the Village would be provided with internet service. This is being provided as SpaceX wants to be a good community member and that the fiber optics had to be ran out to the Launch Site. 

http://www.bocachicawebcam.com, here we come!

[Nomadd]

There are some other options to lay new cables underground without digging a whole trench:

I have seen this used to lay new internet cables before. The machines can dig a tunnel for a cable right under roads without having to dig up the road.

The runs are between 1.3km and 1.9km. I haven't seen the sort of rigs that could bore that distance, but I could have missed them. Or, they might have bored smaller stretches at a time with the the rigs which can do about 300 meters. This soil would seem to be perfect for boring. Few rocks or cobblestones. Most of the sections seem to have been terminated or spliced and are in concrete vaults now, but there are still a few sticking out of the ground.
 Two wi-fi repeaters would cover the whole metropolis out here. I think my back yard would be a perfect place for them to put a freestanding 40' Rohn 45 for the eastern site. With a good internet connection, Verizon could put a microcell out here. (Because Verizon doesn't make tethering a pain in the ass like the other major phone company)

[bocachicagal]

A new banner at the construction site!

[Nomadd]

 It looks like they are collecting and hauling off water.  They have the site pretty well damned off, but I can't see it being much good for rain during storms. It might be mainly for the stuff coming up the wicks.

[Lar]

It looks like they are collecting and hauling off water.  They have the site pretty well damned off, but I can't see it being much good for rain during storms. It might be mainly for the stuff coming up the wicks.

What's that green thing in the first pic? Portable scale to tell how much material came in?