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It is wise to use some sort of waterproof coating for the beacon's PCB prior installation. Then you should solder the LiPo battery an put the assembly into the heat shrink tube.
Installing the beacon it is recommended to provide maximum sky visibility for the GPS receiver. Sometimes it is feasible to put the power button outside of the beacon. For the case, there is a button pin (located under the connector) which should be pulled to ground when the button is pressed. Avoid installation locations where the beacon may be subject to strong deformation (for example, in front of a heavy battery) or may be buried under the radiopaque objects.
The beacon can be turned on manually with a short (0.5 sec) button press. The beacon indicates its startup with LEDs, a short buzzer signal, broadcast of a welcome tone, and LiPo voltage announcement.
The beacon turns on automatically when a micro USB is connected to a charging voltage (5V). When installing on the aircraft it is possible to leave only two wires in the micro USB cable: GND and +5V. I.e. the beacon will turn itself on together with the aircraft. Startup indication is the same as with manual power on.
To turn off the beacon or force a reset, just press and hold the button for at least 5 sec.
Modern GPS receivers are considered as low power devices, however, they still consume significant current (about 30mA), which makes it impossible to keep is powered on constantly. That said, the beacon, being in standby mode, turns off the built-in GPS receiver to reduce power consumption. GPS/Glonass receiver used in the beacon, discover a location within about 2 minutes (with a cold start and in about any position). However, to increase accuracy and reliability, the beacon uses twice as much time to power the GPS - 5 minutes.
The beacon powers it's GPS in the following cases:
Time left to GPS power off the beacon is announcing with every minute countdown reports: 5-4-3-2-1-0(off). Besides that, the beacon reports the location as soon as it is determined by the GPS. However, since the first "fix" usually is no accurate enough (the deviation could reach tens of meters), it is recommended to wait some more time, call the beacon again, and get a more accurate location.
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The beacon can be connected to a PC using any USB-micro USB cable. In order to connect there should be installed CP210x drivers, which could be downloaded from a Silicon Labs website: CP210x USB to UART Bridge VCP Drivers.
Choose the correct COM-port and press the "CONNECT" button. After that, the beacon will reboot and enter the configuration mode.
Firmware flashing is done automatically using the "FLASH FW" button. The correct COM-port should be selected and the "CONNECT" button should NOT be pressed.
How to get started with tBeacon
tBeacon Black radio beacon (out of production)
$1,137.56