A Ground Station App
Worth Shipping With the Kit

SCK Ground Station — Home

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Live Telemetry Dashboard

The Home tab gives you a real-time view into your radio's operating state. Connect, click Get Telem, and every panel updates immediately.

• ⏱️
  Uptime Counter

  Live seconds since last boot — helps identify unexpected reboots.

• 📶
  RSSI & LQI

  Received signal strength and link quality from the last packet received.

• 📊
  Packet Counters

  Packets sent, good packets, rejected checksum, UART RX counts — all live.

• 🖥️
  Color-Coded Log

  Every TX and RX packet logged with timestamp, raw bytes, and parsed fields.

SCK Ground Station — Commands

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Standard SCK Commands

One-click access to all standard SCK protocol commands. Set the HWID in the header bar to address any board — board 0001 relays commands to board 0004 over RF automatically.

• 📡
  Get Telem

  Request and display full telemetry from any addressed board.

• 🔁
  Reboot

  Remote reboot any board over RF with one click.

• 🕐
  Get / Set Time

  Read and set the onboard RTC clock.

• 📻
  Callsign

  Read and write the stored callsign — up to 8 characters.

SCK Ground Station — Custom Commands

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Extensible Custom Command System

The most powerful tab in the application. Define any opcode with any hex payload, save it with a name, and send it with one click. Pre-loaded with the full Pico command set.

• 💾
  JSON Persistent

  All commands saved automatically between sessions.

• 📷
  Pico Commands Pre-Loaded

  PING, READ TEMP, SNAP, GET GPS, GET BARO, LIST FILES — all ready to use.

• 🔤
  Auto-Decoded Responses

  ASCII responses from the Pico are automatically decoded and displayed.

• 🧩
  Any Opcode, Any Payload

  Not limited to pre-defined commands. Perfect for custom firmware development.

SCK Ground Station — GPS / Map · Live telemetry

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The GPS tab is the heart of the HAB mission experience. Fused GPS + barometric telemetry plots live on Google Maps every 10 seconds. All 8 sensor channels displayed, recorded, and exported.

• 🗺️
  Live Google Maps

  Autonomous beacon plots position every 10 seconds. Cyan track builds throughout the flight.

• 📊
  8 Stat Panels

  Lat, Lon, GPS Alt, Sats (row 1) + Pressure hPa, Baro Alt, Baro Temp, Fix/Pkts (row 2).

• 📈
  Altitude Display

  Animated bar graphs, ascent rate with arrows, max altitude session high, GPS/baro delta, burst detection.

• ⏺️
  Flight Recorder

  One click to start recording. Saves .sckflight + auto-generates KML on stop. Opens Flights folder automatically.

• 🗺️
  Export KML

  Full flight track with launch, apogee, and landing pins for Google Earth.

SCK Ground Station — Files

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Remote SD Card File Manager

A complete file manager for the Pico's SD card — over RF. Browse, download, and delete files without touching the remote hardware.

• ↺
  Refresh List

  Requests file listing from Pico SD card over RF. Populates the file list in under a second.

• ⬇️
  Get File

  Chunked transfer — 200 bytes at a time. Progress bar shows every chunk. Auto-opens Images folder on completion.

• 🗑️
  Delete File

  Confirmation dialog then remote delete. File removed from SD card without physical access.

• 🔄
  Retry Logic

  3 automatic retries per chunk. Handles occasional RF dropouts gracefully.

SCK Ground Station — Firmware

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Build, Sign & Flash Over The Air

The complete firmware development pipeline in one tab. Build your custom CC1110 firmware with SDCC, sign it with your AES key, and flash it to the remote board over RF — without touching the hardware.

• 🔨
  Build / Clean + Build

  Runs mingw32-make on your OpenLST source tree. Builds bootloader and radio application.

• 🔐
  AES-CBC-MAC Signing

  Signs your firmware hex with the board's AES key. Bootloader verifies signature before accepting.

• 📡
  Flash OTA

  Sends firmware page-by-page over RF. Retry logic per page. Progress bar tracks every 128-byte page write.

• ✕
  Cancel Button

  Cancel any in-progress OTA flash cleanly. Board returns to application after cancellation.

SCK Ground Station — Flight Replay

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Every flight is automatically saved to a .sckflight file — on the ground station AND on the SD card in the payload. Load any flight file after recovery and replay the entire mission with animated map, altitude chart, and event timeline.

• ▶️
  Animated Playback

  Step through every beacon packet. Map marker moves in real time. Variable speed — 1x to 10x.

• 📈
  Altitude Chart

  Barometric altitude plotted across the full flight. Apogee marked automatically.

• 📷
  Image Events

  SNAP commands shown on the timeline — see exactly where each photo was taken.

• 💾
  SD Black Box

  Even if RF was lost mid-flight the SD card has every packet. Pull the card after recovery and replay the complete mission.

SCK Ground Station — RF QA

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Every SCK-915 board that leaves our lab gets a printed RF QA certificate. The RF QA tab automates the entire process — spectrum scan, 2-FSK center frequency detection, harmonic check, and a printable PASS/FAIL certificate. Requires an RTL-SDR Blog V3/V4 dongle.

• 📡
  One-Click QA Scan

  Triggers board TX, runs rtl_power sweep, detects 2-FSK center frequency automatically. 9 second total test time.

• 📊
  Live Spectrum Chart

  Frequency vs dBm drawn live. Green peak marker shows detected center frequency.

• ✅
  PASS / FAIL Per Board

  Center frequency, peak power, 2nd and 3rd harmonic levels checked. Overall PASS/FAIL banner.

• 🖨️
  Printable Certificate

  Professional HTML certificate opens in browser — print to PDF. Included with every board we ship.

• 📁
  Snapshot Archive

  Every scan auto-saved as SCK915_SERIAL_snap001_fund.csv. Browse and reload any previous snapshot.

SCK Ground Station — Provision

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Board Provisioning

Flash the bootloader onto fresh CC1110 boards using the TI CC Debugger. Sets the hardware ID, embeds AES signing keys, and programs the bootloader image — all from one interface.

• 🔑
  HWID Assignment

  Assign any hardware ID (e.g. 0001, 0004) that becomes the board's permanent RF address.

• 🔒
  AES Key Embedding

  Three 16-byte AES signing keys embedded in the bootloader.

• 💾
  SmartRF Integration

  Calls TI SmartRF Flash Programmer automatically via CC Debugger to erase, program, and verify.

• ✅
  Verify After Flash

  SmartRF verifies the written image byte-for-byte. Board is ready for OTA firmware updates immediately.

Opens any .sckflight recording and plays it back with full animation. Load Mission V1 real flight data before you buy a kit.

• 🗺️
  Animated Map Track

  Position marker moves on Google Maps in real time during playback. Launch, apogee, and landing pins always visible.

• 📈
  Altitude Profile Chart

  Baro alt (cyan), GPS alt (blue dashed), temperature (orange dotted) with moving cursor.

• ⏩
  Variable Speed Playback

  1x, 5x, 10x, 30x, 60x. Scrub bar for instant jump to any point in the flight.

• 📋
  Event Timeline

  LAUNCH, APOGEE, BURST, LANDING auto-detected with timestamps and statistics.

• ⬇️
  Try Before You Buy

  Download Mission V1 flight file and experience a real stratospheric flight before purchasing a kit.