We’ve been having lots of fun over the last few weeks playing with a revolutionary new satellite communications device by Rock 7 called the RockBLOCK. I say “revolutionary”, because when you hook it up to an Arduino–and this is super easy–you can inexpensively send and receive short “burst” messages for the first time from anywhere in the planet.
You power a RockBLOCK either directly via USB or through the regulated 5V Arduino power bus. Connecting a RockBLOCK to Arduino involves connecting only five wires–power, ground, transmit, receive, and sleep.
The Arduino library we’ve built to support the RockBLOCK harnesses the Iridium SBD (“Short Burst Data”) service to send and receive short messages up to a couple of hundred bytes.
In the simplest case, you can transmit short text messages using the sendSBDText() method:
isbd.begin();
isbd.sendSBDText("Hello, world!")
Our IridiumSBD library also allows you to send and receive binary messages, using sendSBDBinary and sendReceiveSBDBinary. We use these in the “Beacon” sample application that comes with the library source. Every hour Beacon reads the device’s current location from a GPS module, then transmits it to the world using the RockBLOCK. We expect to see derivatives working in high-altitude balloon applications and solar-powered ocean buoys.
And it’s quite likely that Reverse Geocache puzzles will soon be equipped with this tracking technology. Try the library out and tell us what you think below.
The latest version of IridiumSBD is available here.
Rudi
11 years ago
This is quite interesting.
How many bytes of data can you send at a time, and where do you sent it to?
Mikal
11 years ago
@Rudi,
Yep, it’s pretty cool. You can send up to 340 bytes in a single message, or receive up to 270. When you configure your Rock7 account, you tell it whether you want your messages delivered as email messages or via an http POST. Thinking of trying it out?
Garth
11 years ago
Hi Mikal thanks for a insight to another realm. :)
tex
10 years ago
Is this a broadcast transmission to anyone “listening”, or can it be directed to a particular recipient?
Mikal
10 years ago
@tex,
You configure in the RockBLOCK control panel who gets the transmission. Messages can be directed to a specific email address (or multiple addresses?) and/or posted to a designated website using the HTTP GET protocol.
joehoeller@gmail.com
10 years ago
I am new to programming Arduinos and was wondering if you could email me and maybe Skype? I am sure its nothing major, I just cant get my sketches to upload with a SIM908 GPRS/GPS shield on it.
Mikal
10 years ago
@joeholler–
I recommend the very useful resource http://forum.arduino.cc/.
kamal
10 years ago
is there any available api for the globalstar stx3 to be interfaced with an arduino?
Michael Bueno
9 years ago
This is to joehoeller@gmail.com regarding not being able to upload sketches with GPS shield attached.
It is probable that your GPS shield is using the serial port of your arduino, specifically digital pins d0 (receive) d1 (transmit).
These are the same pins that are used when you hook up your arduino to a USB cable to upload a sketch, hence the difficulty.
In order to upload your sketch, you probably need to disconnect your GPS shield first, do the upload, then reconnect the shield after the upload is complete (and probably hit the reset button on the arduino after reconnecting the GPS shield to restart the sketch).
This is a common problem when trying communication via the serial port.
Good luck!
Rodrigo
9 years ago
Hi,
Can I use the library with a Raspberry Pi?
Rod
Mikal
9 years ago
@Rodrigo,
I suspect it would take some modification–but probably not too much. I used it on Intel Edison (x86) and Teensy.
Bhavik
7 years ago
Hi,
Kindly help me the the rockblock mk2 pin connections as it says “waiting for response” on the serial monitor?
Bhavik