TinyGS Ground Station Build Guide for the Heltec LoRa 32 V3

What you build

You build a receiving station that hears small satellites as they pass over your house, from about $20 in parts. A Heltec WiFi LoRa 32 V3 board listens on 433 MHz, a better antenna replaces the small one in the box, and the open TinyGS network collects what you hear and puts your station on a world map beside every other volunteer receiver.

The board does one job. When a CubeSat or a pico satellite flies within range, its LoRa beacon reaches your antenna, the board decodes the packet, and TinyGS logs it with your station’s name. The radio only listens. Transmit stays off unless you hold an amateur license.

This station belongs on theconsciousness.ai because the project’s aerospace pillar asks what it takes to run computation and sensing in orbit, the kind of hardware a machine that perceives its surroundings would one day carry. Before anyone flies a payload, they need to hear one. This station is a cheap way to receive real telemetry from real spacecraft, and a first step toward listening to a satellite of your own.

Budget one evening for the build and setup, then let it run while satellites come over.

Parts list

The minimum station is the board plus a USB C cable, about $20 before shipping. The recommended station adds an outdoor 433 MHz antenna. Prices below were read on the sellers’ pages on November 12, 2026. Prices change, so check them before you buy.

Heltec’s own listing names the board, a LoRa antenna, a battery connector and two pin headers. It names no pigtail, while the two European sellers above list one. Check what your box holds before you plan the outdoor antenna.

Buy the 433 MHz version of the board, and confirm the listing you buy from says 433 MHz, because Heltec’s own page is not consistent about the band options. TinyGS says more than 90% of active LoRa satellites on its network use the 437 and 400 MHz bands, and a board matched to 868 or 915 MHz will run the firmware but hear little from orbit. Source

TinyGS names the Heltec V3 as its recommended board, ahead of LilyGO boards, because its radio has a temperature compensated crystal (TCXO) that holds frequency. Its April 2026 newsletter says LilyGO T3 boards can have frequency stability issues, and reports one member whose daily packet count rose from about 400 to about 700 after swapping a LilyGO T3 v1.6 for a Heltec board on the same antenna. Newsletter

Heltec has since released a V4 board. We found no TinyGS note confirming V4 support as of November 12, 2026, so this guide sticks with the V3.

Tools

The board build needs no soldering. The pin headers in the box stay in the bag.

• A computer running Linux, Windows or macOS with Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge (the TinyGS web installer needs one of these browsers)
• A USB C cable that carries data, since many charging cables do not
• A phone or laptop with WiFi, to reach the station’s setup page
• Your station’s latitude and longitude (any map app shows them)
• Soldering iron and solder, wire cutters, pliers, a ruler, epoxy or hot glue, and self amalgamating or mastic tape for the outdoor joint (DIY antenna only)
• A NanoVNA to trim the DIY antenna to frequency (optional)

Build the station

The board’s LoRa antenna socket is a tiny IPEX (U.FL) snap connector, and it is the one fragile part of the build.

1. Check the box against the listing. Confirm the label or listing says 433 MHz before you go further.
2. For a first test, connect the small LoRa antenna from the box to the board’s LoRa socket. Line the IPEX connector up square and press straight down with a fingertip until it clicks. Never pull it off by the cable; lift it with a fingernail under the connector.
3. For an outdoor antenna, snap an IPEX to SMA pigtail onto the same socket instead, and screw the antenna’s cable onto the pigtail’s SMA end.
4. Fix the pigtail so it cannot tug on the socket. A dab of hot glue or a cable tie to a small board or case does it.
5. Plug the USB C cable into the board and your computer. The small OLED screen may stay blank until the firmware is on.
6. Keep the board indoors; only the antenna and its coax go outside.

Once setup is done, the station runs from USB power around the clock.

Flash TinyGS and set up the station

Three pieces have to line up, a TinyGS account, firmware on the board and the station’s settings. Do them in that order.

1. Get a TinyGS account and your station credentials

Since TinyGS’s Christmas 2025 release, it accepts sign ups by email invite, with no Telegram needed. Ask an active member for an invite, or (schools and workshops) write to the address on the join tutorial. The Telegram route still works. Join the TinyGS group, open a private chat with @tinygs_personal_bot, and send /mqtt for the MQTT user and password your station needs. Send /weblogin to the same bot for a login link to the web console.

2. Flash the firmware

1. Open installer.tinygs.com in Chrome or Edge with the board plugged in.
2. Click install and pick the board’s serial port when the browser asks. The installer reads the chip and chooses the matching firmware.
3. Wait for it to finish and the board to restart.

TinyGS calls the installer experimental. If it fails, the fallback is PlatformIO, covered on the TinyGS wiki.

3. Configure the station

On first boot the board opens a WiFi network named “My TinyGS”. Join it from your phone or laptop; the setup page should open by itself, and if it does not, browse to 192.168.4.1. The user name is always admin.

Save. The board joins your WiFi, connects to the TinyGS server and starts listening. Source

Antenna options

The antenna decides how many packets you catch. The TinyGS wiki says the small antenna in the box “most likely will not give any result” for satellites, though its FAQ notes such antennas have caught distant packets in good conditions. Treat it as a bench test and move to one of these.

Build the DIY ground plane (433.5 MHz)

1. Cut one vertical wire and four radials from 12 or 14 AWG solid copper, each 10 to 20% longer than the target.
2. Thread the SO239 onto a spare cable or male connector before you solder; the extra metal acts as a heat sink. Then solder the vertical wire into the center pin.
3. Bolt one radial to each corner hole of the connector flange with M3 bolts.
4. Bend the four radials down to about 45 degrees. That angle brings the antenna close to 50 ohms.
5. Trim the vertical to about 16.5 cm from the connector base to the tip, and the radials to about 18.1 cm from the bolt holes. With a NanoVNA, trim a little at a time; cutting is easy, adding wire back is not.
6. Seal the base of the vertical wire with epoxy or hot glue.

Source

Mount it

Put the antenna high and clear, with as much open horizon as you can get, on a pole, mast or balcony rail. Keep the coax run short, and wrap every outdoor connector joint tightly in mastic or self amalgamating tape.

Later, an LNA (low noise amplifier) can lift weak signals. One contributor’s tests on the TinyGS wiki found that a filter is a must alongside it, that a 60 dB amplifier gave no advantage, and that an LNA powered by a bias tee killed a LoRa chip over weeks, so add a DC blocker. Get the plain station working first. Source

Your first satellite

Your first packet arrives when a LoRa satellite passes within range and your antenna can see it. Low orbit passes are short, so the station has to be listening at the right minutes; leave it running.

1. Log in to your station console on tinygs.com with the link from /weblogin or your email account. Find your station by name and check it shows as online.
2. Watch the OLED. Out of the box the station listens for Norby, the network’s default target. With automatic tuning on, it retunes to the nearest compatible satellite about 5 to 10 minutes before that satellite rises, and if none is overhead it waits.
3. When a packet lands, it appears under your station in the console. The packets page on tinygs.com shows packets from the whole network in real time, so you can see other stations hearing the same satellites.
4. Read what came down. TinyGS decodes packets from the satellites it supports, and the console shows what it decoded.

Two things look like failures and are not. A CRC error means a packet arrived with damaged bytes; it still shows the station is hearing something. Packets marked Unknown are usually ground LoRa traffic that shares the band, not satellites. Source

Write down the date, the satellite and your antenna for the first packet. Change one thing at a time after that (antenna height, cable, position) and compare packet counts over a week. That is the first real experiment this station gives you.

Troubleshooting

Sources: TinyGS FAQ, Quick Start. For anything else, the TinyGS Telegram group is where the volunteers who run the network answer.

Next projects

1. Plot your own data. TinyGS documents a programmatic API, still in development, that lets a script control the station and read its data. Chart reception against antenna changes, and send the result to [email protected] if you want it shared as a reader experiment.
2. Add a wideband receiver. Our free RTL-SDR satellite receiver guide pairs an RTL-SDR Blog V4L with a dipole antenna kit and the open SatDump and SatNOGS software to hear weather satellites and the ISS, and to join the SatNOGS network. It covers far more of the spectrum than LoRa; this station teaches the habits it needs.
3. Put a satellite on your desk. AMSAT’s open CubeSatSim is a working 1U model with solar panels, sensors and a radio beacon. Your ground station experience carries straight over, since you will be the operator listening to your own spacecraft. See the kits page for where to get it.

Credits and license

TinyGS is a non profit organization run entirely by volunteers. It started on November 28, 2019 as the ESP32 OLED Fossa GroundStation and took the TinyGS name when tinyGS.com launched on February 14, 2021. Its station software is licensed under GPL 3.0. This guide contains none of that code; it sends you to TinyGS’s own installer and wiki. If the network helps you, you can support it through the donation page on tinygs.com.

This guide is independent and written by theconsciousness.ai. It is not made, endorsed or reviewed by TinyGS or Heltec Automation.

The guide is free, and every link in it is a plain link that earns nothing.

Tutorials we built on

All wording above is ours; no TinyGS text is copied. Video tutorials were not reviewed for this guide.

Where sources disagree, or only one source exists

1. The wiki and the FAQ differ on whether the small antenna that ships with the board is enough to start. The guide treats it as a test antenna and recommends an upgrade.
2. The wiki’s board list names only older Heltec and TTGO boards. The repository’s README adds the Heltec V3, and the parts list and the newsletter recommend it. The guide follows the parts list.
3. Heltec’s listing names no pigtail in the box; the two European sellers list one. The guide treats it as a part you may need to buy.
4. The ground plane dimensions come from one tutorial. They match the quarter wave formula for 433 MHz, which is why the guide keeps them.
5. Email invite signup is described in one source, the join tutorial from June 2026.
6. Holding PRG for 8 seconds to reset is described in one source.

Images

Every diagram in this guide was drawn for it by theconsciousness.ai. The guide uses no photos or screenshots from TinyGS, Heltec or any other site.