The Saveitforparts Spacedeck v1: A Cyberdeck for Space!

Given my long history of doing unwise and silly things to computers, a cyberdeck was inevitable. After all, I’ve turned a milk crate into a PC case, a Mac into a fish tank, a flare gun case into a wifi repeater, and so on.

Since I’ve been doing a lot of stuff with old satellite dishes lately, I figured it was time for a more organized, self-contained control and receiver setup. The result is above, made from a surplus police car computer, digital satellite meter, various software-defined radio stuff, and nearly the entire contents of multiple spare parts bins.

Believe it or not, this started out almost modern, with netbooks, SSDs, USB 4.0, Displaylink screen, etc. None of which worked the way I wanted. As usual I fell back on older and more familiar hardware. Everything in the current cyberdeck version is Windows-XP era. I’m actually using Q4OS Linux, but it looks and feels just like Windows XP!

The whole thing probably cost under $50, as most of it was stuff I already had lying around. I did spend the big bucks on a new 60% keyboard and a couple battery packs. The hardware includes:

– Touchscreen computer
– RTL-SDR radio
– Various filter / amp modules
– Various WiFi modules
– Satellite Meter / digital video player
– PTZ control for my older dish pointers
– LNB power injector
– King-Dome / Vuqube control
– Panel-mount port interfaces

Software includes:
– Q4OS (simple, low-resource Linux)
– GQRX (standard SDR software)
– Gpredict for satellite tracking
– GOEStools, WXtoIMG, etc for weather satellites

The system is fairly modular and expandable, with most major components simply stuck in with velcro tape. If I want to swap modules for a different experiment, I can just pop them out and replace with something else. Most of the ports and controls are exposed in two custom-made panels. A friend asked if I were getting these laser cut… nope, just plexiglass on the table saw, print the layout on a vinyl sticker, and slap em together!

As usual, my finish and quality control are… questionable at best. I am more of a duct-tape, hot glue, and hammer artist than a fine detail artist.

You can check out the build video and some demos of this unit’s abilities on my Youtube channel! I also have a bunch of other videos of satellite-related projects and stuff, with more to come!