Description

Circuit board (PCB) and electronics to assemble your own ResQ

Kit Contents:

Wemos D1 Mini Pro microcontroller (SMD antenna solder mod already done for you)
SMA Antenna and connection cable (NOT YAGI- see note)
Current Revision ResQ custom circuit board (PCB)
BN220 GPS Receiver Module
SPI SD Card Interface
16 GB MicroSD Card
0.96″ 128X64 OLED Display
ResQ Air Acrylic Enclosure (case)
Wiring
Stickers
My thanks for supporting this project!

Notes:

No YAGI Antenna is included. You MUST supply that yourself. Get from Amazon HERE or from Amazon here
No power supply is included- you need to provide 5V DC to the board yourself
OLED may come in one of 2 pin orders- check it closely and run your wires accordingly
You must have some basic electronics/soldering skills but no SMD is required. No warranty is provided as this is a kit- be careful with assembly and you will do fine.

ResQ Project History and Details:

I was inspired by the constant stream of search and rescue operations on the television show “North Woods Law”. Each week they struggled to find lost people in the remote/rugged areas of Maine U.S.A. These areas often have no cellular service but in almost every case the target people had cellphones on them and working. As I live in Canada- we have a surplus of these situations in our vast wilderness as well. I theorized I could use an external 2.4GHz antenna to receive the beacon frames from those phones ad capture that data.

This hardware can be embedded in to any very small drone or RC aircraft. It can also be attached to existing manned aircraft already participating in the search.

Using small drone aircraft (like the Nano Talon I use here) gives all the advantages such as flight condition tolerance, height, terrain, time of day etc that drones have over manned aircraft. They can also be sent on the full way-point mission without human intervention and tracked live from any ground station.

What it does (both air AND ground unit):

Detects all Beacons, their RSSI and their MAC addresses
Detects All AP’s in range (not needed but log them anyhow)
Gets GPS Lat/Long positioning
Gets GPS UTC Time
Logs all the above to the SD card .csv file every time any device detected changes
Displays the number of clients detected, APs detected, time and Lat/Long on the OLED screen live.
Send Telemetry to ground station via LORA or wireless via Bluetooth
Trigger external camera module to capture image

BUILD

The air and ground units both use exactly the same hardware/PCB with the only difference being the power supply on the ground (battery) and larger directional antenna on the ground unit. This keeps the instructions, assembly and BOM very simple. All the parts (except YAGI) are currently even stocked in my local Amazon warehouse here in Canada – Handy!

I am using the Wemos D1 mini PRO (for both air and ground units) with an external antenna (YAGI or omni/dipole) to receive the beacon frames, log them to SD Card with the MAC address and GPS coordinates to easily plot with Google Earth/maps. It can also transmit the live data telemetry via LORA or similar module to the ground instantly as well by sending the debug UART via radio to a simple USB interfaced ground station.

The electronics are simple enough that anyone with basic soldering skills can assemble their own ResQ from scratch or kit in under an hour.

MEDIA

See YT playlist for existing tutorials in the links (I documented most facets of the build in standalone related videos which when all combines- make this project) Handy eh

Contest Entry Overview Video: