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Sometime in the late '80s Bruce SM0TER decided it was no fun to try and aim a satellite antenna, adjust radio freq for doppler shift all while trying to have a qso. He created some software for that ran in Basic on a Micromint 8052 controller. It was based on W3IWI's orbit tracking programs made popular in the '80s. In 1991 Sueo JA6FTL started to correspond with Bruce via UO-14. They collaborated and designed a new microcomputer design that was much cheaper then the MicroMint controller and included everything necessary for computing satellite orbits and pointing antennas automatically. They wrote software for the board in 'C' and sped it up considerably. JAMSAT got involved and asked TAPR in the US to distribute the boards. Unfortunately this product is no longer made, and I have contacted JAMSAT and several Japanese hams to see if they could talk to the Authors and release the code here on GITHUB so that it could be reutilized on newer more modern hardware.
This is the reply I received from Mineo Wakita JE9PEL:
Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2018 18:29:52 +0900 Subject: Re^3: Trakbox I, JE9PEL received an reply of the following additional content from the JAMSAT's Official Staff.
When opening the contents of Source Code of Trakbox,**** the following developer's Copyright was included.****
// / Tracking code for Southern NET VersaBoard 8051 / / 8031/51/52 CPU 1991/09/29 / / (C) Jxxxxx, Name Club name 1991 / / Jyyyyy, Name / / QTH xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx / //
Because we can not communicate now with these two authors, JAMSAT can not proceed any further.
Therefore we can not register Trakbox source code with GITHUB. We are very sorry.****
JE9PEL, Mineo Wakita
I thought to myself what a shame, that code will be lost forever if it is not shared, and of course there are no new trakboxes being manufactured for hams to use in the future. I understand there are a lot of different satellite tracking solutions out there today, however most of them require a complete pc and they have to communicate to a rotor controller to position the antennas etc..
That's when I had an idea. Since the firmware image for the trakbox was released to hams and made publicly available on many different inernet sites as an eprom image, why not write some software for a faster, more modern embedded microcontroller that could emulate the trakbox cpu (805x) and also emulate the hardware of the original trakbox. In this way the firmware could be utilized as distributed on newer hardware and therefore a new trakbox could be made available for hams to build.
Before I could begin the project I received several emails from Japan eventually leading to the Authors allowing release under MIT License. So this repository is twofold now, one to keep the older code possibly up to date and useful, but more toward porting the code to newer more powerful hardware so that a new trakboxDue can be realized with more modern features and options.