The belated July 2024 recipient for the Great Scott Gadgets Free Stuff Program is Scott Carter from Ontario, Canada! Scott operates a SETI station that uses a radio telescope he built using software defined radio. He says the radio telescope has been in operation for six and a half years, and it needs a receiver upgrade to allow scanning of frequencies above 2 GHz. We are sending Scott a HackRF One so he can make his radio telescope upgrade! Scott’s long-term goal is to make his SETI station accessible remotely for educational purposes so more folks can learn about radio astronomy.

One story Scott shares with us about his SETI station is that he helped two young astronomy students in the Philippines do drift scans of the sun using his system, which he had configured for 1420 MHz. At the time, the telescope was remotely accessible via a web page and command line tools, which worked pretty well, although it was limited to changes in elevation only. Since that experience, Scott has begun modifications for azimuth control, and he will be upgrading to a 10-foot dish. We are also happy to see that the software he uses for digital signal processing is being rewritten and will be available as open source.

This application for the Free Stuff program stood out to the team here at Great Scott Gadgets because it focuses on radio astronomy, which we’d like to see HackRF One be used for more often. We also really appreciate the work Scott is doing to support astronomy fans from all over the world. Free Stuff applications like this that describe specific projects in detail really stand out. We look forward to getting updates from Scott soon!