# TinyGS vs. SatNOGS: A Comparative Analysis of Open-Source Satellite Ground Station Networks
## 6 Conclusions
This research was funded by Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia under the project \"PROMETHEUS--PocketQube Framework Designed for Research and Educational Access to Space\" (ref. CMU/TIC/0017/2021), under the CMU Portugal Program, and was supported by FCT national funds, under the national support to R&D units grant, through the reference project UIDB/04436/2020 and UIDP/04436/2020. **Data Availability Statement:** During the article's development, all TinyGS data including GS details and satellite information were collected from TinyGS's web application [23]. However, for SatNOGS, the GSs' details were obtained from the SatNOGS network API [10], and the satellite details were \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c} \hline \hline
**Project** & **Strength** & **Weakness** \\ \hline \multirow{8}{*}{TinyGS} & Low Difficulty/Time * & Lack of Documentation \\ \cline{2-3}  & Low Cost & Low n* of satellites capable of communication \\ \cline{2-3}  & Good geographical distribution of GSs ** & Only communicates with LoRa satellites \\ \cline{2-3}  & Open-source & Limited by the satellites in the database \\ \cline{2-3}  & Support and n* of members & Unable to control motors/rotators for \\  & & antennas *** \\ \cline{2-3}  & High n* of GSs online ** & Low range of frequencies *** \\ \hline \multirow{8}{*}{SatNOGS} & Good Documentation & Manually updated \\ \cline{2-3}  & Low Cost **** & Limited by the satellites in the database \\ \cline{2-3}  & High n* of satellites capable of communication & Low percentage of satellites with \\ \cline{2-3}  & & decoded data compared to those \\ \cline{1-1} \cline{2-3}  & & successfully communicated with \\ \cline{1-1} \cline{2-3}  & Open-Source & - \\ \cline{1-1} \cline{2-3}  & Support and n* of members & - \\ \cline{1-1} \cline{2-3}  & Able to control motors/rotators for & - \\ \cline{1-1} \cline{2-3}  & antennas *** & - \\ \cline{1-1} \cline{2-3}  & The user can schedule observations on & - \\ \cline{1-1} \cline{2-3}  & other users’ GSs & - \\ \cline{1-1} \cline{2-3}  & Wider range of frequencies **** & - \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}  
* It is presumed that the reader chooses to exclusively utilize commercial components. ** Based on data from 29 July 2023. *** Useful to use directional antennas to receive weaker signals. **** The GS is limited by the LoRa module frequency. **** Only if the reader opts for the Fixed SatNOGS GS. **** Since it uses an SDR.  
\end{table} 
Table 5: Main strengths and weaknesses of TinyGS and SatNOGS. retrieved from the SatNOGS DB API [11]. GS data encompassed their coordinates ([latitude, longitude]), frequency ranges, creation date, and the last time that GS was online (only for SatNOGS), while satellite data covered operational status, downlink frequency, and the number of data received and decoded by GSs from that specific satellite. The data concerning the last time the GS (ground station) was online (e.g., 5 October 2022 12:49:26) were crucial to determining whether the SatNOGS GSs were online within the last 24 h on 29 July 2023, and consequently, were used to carry out Topics 6, 7, and 8 mentioned in the Methodology section. In TinyGS, these data were not needed because, at the time of writing (August 2023), all the GSs listed in the TinyGS web application were online within the last 24 h. Coordinates (e.g., [38.0169, 23.731] in degrees) and the frequency range of the GSs (e.g., [400, 460] MHz) were used exclusively in Topics 7 and 8, respectively, to observe the geographical distribution and frequency bands. The last piece of data regarding GSs, the creation date (e.g., 22 July 2015), was used in Topic 14 to observe the number of GSs from corresponding projects over time. Regarding satellites, the operational status aims to indicate whether a satellite is on the network satellite list so that the network can configure GSs to observe and receive data from that satellite. This variable takes only two values, \"True\" or \"False\", and was used in Topics 9, 10, 11, and 12.