Getting Ready to Receive EIRSAT-1 Telemetry Soon After Launch
Getting Ready to Receive EIRSAT-1 Telemetry Soon After Launch
We are happy to note that two of the scientists involved in the EIRSAT-1 project are of VU origin, which is another reason for us to be excited on the launch! From the github page of EIRSAT-1 I found that their ground station relies on gr-satellites program. To try it out I needed a Linux machine.
As the Windows laptops and desktop at home have other users who do not want Linux installed on them, I thought of reviving an old laptop with burnt off SSD and bulged out battery to use for Ubuntu.
Took it to the local laptop repair shop and had the bulged battery removed and a new NVME SSD installed. In addition I purchased a 32 GB USB flash drive for use preparing Ubuntu boot disk. Here are the pictures of the two.
Initially I created Windows 10 boot image on the USB drive, downloaded from Microsoft site, and used it to restore the previous factory installed Windows on the laptop successfully. Then started the process of installing Ubuntu prior to installing gr-satellites module for EIRSAT-1. First I tried using ISO image on USB drive to install as dual boot on existing Windows. I had used Balena Etcher to flash the USB drive. Though flashing was succesful, I could not install Ubuntu with it initially. Then I tried installing Windows Subsystem for Linux from MS Appstore and then Ubuntu through it. But somewhow it did not succeed.
I reached out to my freinds on our VU LEO Satellite Repeater contact group and received important advice. From their advice, I found that I had not disabled secure boot and enabled boot from USB as first option in the Bios. After rectifying these two, I could complete installation of Ubuntu as a dual boot on Windows, using the ISO image on the USB drive.
But the problems have not ended there. After the installation of Ubuntu, I was prompted to restart the computer. On restarting it started off booting to Ubuntu and then prompted for removal of installation media from the USB drive. When the installation media in USB drive was removed, the system booted back into Windows! It did not show a choice of booting to either Ubuntu or Windows, which used to be the situation when I had used Ubuntu and Windows XP as dual boot couple of decades back. Now I have to work on it again before I can install gr-satellites program for potential decoding of telemetry from EIRSAT-1.