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Build Your Own Satellite Ground Station
kavachameleon writes "A site called Hobby Space has this article at which there are instructions on how you can build your own satellite weather station! Something I think all of us have wanted to do at one point or another, this site tells us all how to "hack" into the weather satellites and get back usable pictures using our PCs and an AM antenna. There are more instructions for getting geostationary images."
Fantastic! Now even when Weather.com is down I can still see what the weather is like without having to expose by pasty white skin to the elements.
Is it really worth hacking a damn weather satellite when you can turn on any news station or hit weather.com or wunderground.com and get global/regional/local conditions?
On the other hand it would be pretty cool if you could jury-rig a means of watching the Iraq-US battle via satellite or find a way to make a de facto spy satellite out of it...
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
Now that you've "hacked" a weather satellite, how long till Ashcroft and Co. deem you an enemy combatant?
You should have just turned to The Weather Channel on digital cable when the site was unavailable.
"I am not a number!" - Number Six, The Prisoner
Along the same lines, a bunch of rich geeks over at SpaceX are building a rocket to go to space. Who needs NASA when you have a huge chunk o cash? Combine these two projects and you can start your very own space program!
-Valiss
Are available here.
Takes a bit more equipment, though.
Guess we don't need that anymore! Now the networks have to search for new catchy phrases (like live doppler 7000) to get our viewership for their late night weather forecast!
If it's illegal to create your own equipment for receiving and decoding satellite television transmissions, then is it legal to do the same for weather satellite transmissions? What about other kinds of satellites that may be beaming all sorts of information through our homes?
First off, I want to clarify that I did not RTFA.
But Just the synopsis and the fact that it's getting data from a gov't satalite, when your not an "authorized" recipient (i.e. not a gov't satalite station), makes me think that this might be taken as being illegal in some way.
Just my mode of think from having previous interactions with governmental information systems and running the red tape gauntlets.
Just my $.02
I've been reading articles about how to decode these pictures since the 60's - I've got ARRL books and magazines going back at least that far. Hobbyists have been doing this with PCs since the late 70's. The transmissions are basically faxes, so it's pretty easy to decode with a sound card.
I know there have been some old news stories appearing lately, but really now...
Hacking weather satellites is lame. I want to hack the secret Illuminati Weather Machines and Plate Tectonic Control Grid...
Damn... where's my tinfoil hat>
Trolling is a art,
Things I want to do this weekend:
1) Clean the barbeque grill
2) Vacuum the living room
3) Build a weather satellite station
otherwise I don't see the point.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/02/20/131825 9&mode=thread&tid=159
Now will someone post how I can build my own satellite and get it into orbit? :)
Once again slashdot stumbles upon an already popular hobby. http://www.scnt01426.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Articles /WXSAT/wxsat.htm
Even if I did build my evil master "weather" satellite station, the Dept. of Homeland Security would prevent me from launching my evil master "weather" satellite.
5 9&mode=thread&tid=159
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/02/20/13182
This is lame.
BUT, how hard would it be to pick up say, CNN's satellite downlink.
Are the signals enrypted? Obviously DirecTV signals are, but what about CNN's own downlink to their stations?
North Korea's major ICBM apparently uses a mix of gasoline and kerosine for most of it's propulsion except for a small solid motor on the uppermost stage. If impoverished North Korea can build and launch a missile 2500 km w/ a theoretical 1000 lb payload (exact stats are at http://www.fas.org, I'm referring to their 1998 test) using aluminum, gasoline, and kerosine, why not apply the same tech and launch your own satellites for much less money than anyone else charges? Hell, if you made a quality pod and did serious testing on it (or just buy one from Russia), you might just be able to get someone into space and back for very low cost...
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
You could just go to NOAA's Geostationary Satellite Server page and D/L the damn things.
I guess I have to turn in my geek card now...
One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.
When you can check the weather by going outside http://www.ramseyelectronics.com/cgi-bin/commerce. exe?preadd=action&key=ws5000
RadioCom Screen Image
Is there a command line tool for grabbing weather data? I'd like to do some MRTG graphs of internal temp sensors vs. external temperatures. Unfortunately I don't have a way to get "outside" at the facilities I want outside temps for. If there was some "wxfetch --temp --site=sna" command that would give me easily parsable basic weather data (no pix, all text) it'd rock.
Learn how to build your own International Space Station (ISS) !
For those that think that Amateur radio uses
acient technology, look into the great space
stuff hams are doing..
Two way satellite contacts, contacts with the
space station, hand-held data transmission
via satellite.. pretty neat stuff..
check out AMSAT and the ISS radio page.
...when Antic, the Atari magazine, had an article about how to do this with the Atari ST. I think that was in like 198...7?
Dave
this has been done 30 years or so now.
those things are not cheap, not by a long shot...
as a matter of fact PC controled radio recievers are pretty damn expensive...
One could always set up a NOAAPORT system and download images and data.l
http://205.156.54.206/noaaport/html/noaaport.shtm
We were doing this in my 7th grade science class with our superfly 386DX-40.
My high school physics teacher had something very similar to this in the classroom in 1993. I think he said the software and antenna cost him $175 if I remember correctly. There may have been an educational discount involved though I suppose.
The software he had was really slick it would even display IR data from some satelites over a photo so as you drug the mouse around, you could see the temperature of the pixel you were pointing to.
Just like in the example given in the article, there were times in which there were no satellites overhead to connect to, but I remember there being a large selection of sattelites that it would listen to including a bunch of foreign weather satelites.
I wish I had more specifics but that's all I can remember right now.
Ham radio operators have been doing it for years. I'm sure there are quite a few short wave listeners (SWL) that have been doing it also. All you need is a couple of caps, resistors and the like to build the interface between the radio and the computer.
I'm sure it's gotten even easier now with the advent of the cheap sound card and processors. Most of the digital modes via ham radio can be done with a sound card.
...with my life if they can't even spell "ascent"?
(From their flash demo of the Falcon LV Vehicle Explorer, click on Interstage)
"Houses and protects the 2nd stage engine and Falcon 1st stage recovery system during assent."
"It's a very tangled subsystem." --Windows kernel guru
Technically it's not hacking since the weather satellites are constantly transmitting the images and you are just receiving it and processing them.
I ported the wx200d communication code to BSD a year ago. Good software!
Pat
With this im sure I can make better predictions on the weather then the T.V. weather broadcasters can!
.. will use it to send secret messages by manipulating the weather!
Years ago there was an article in the Atari magazines _Antic_ and _STart_ (for 8-bit and STs respectively) that detailed how to make a WEFAX (weather facsimile) device for pulling weather images off a shortwave radio. I was able to built it but never had a shortwave radio so the thing just sat there. You could supposedly purchase cassette tapes of the signal, but that seemed vaguely ridiculous.
But using computers to do other things besides email and web browsing has always fascinated me. I'm now trying to get the GRASS system working so that I can create maps of my area. No luck so far, but success is imminent (I hope). If anyone knows of other projects that allow computers (running Linux in particular) to map the world, chart the weather, decode satellite images, etc., please let me know.
ergsdfg
without the country and state borders superimposed you can't tell what the heck is going on.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
From the article....
Combined with the bad weather of winter and the short days, the images from home were dark and short...
This is great- it doesn't work if the weather's rotten! how useful for a weather-watching satellite receiver....
...and suddenly the price of Icom PCR1000 radio's on ebay skyrockets...
just like the powerbook 280c after that picture frame article! =)
This is mostly interesting because of it's unusual way of decoding digitally transmitted satellite data. The idea of using a sound card and a short wave receiver to decode satellite imagery is... quaint.
:) But it's not as if any of this data is particularly... restricted, or secret.
But why play around with that when you tap into the freely-accessible C-band T-1 National Weather Service downlink, NOAAPORT and get all the international surface obs data, text products, rawinsonde (weather balloons), Nexrad doppler radar, and supercomputing forecast model data for free?
Well, okay, this approach is less appealing as you need a high-speed RS-422 serial controller, a satellite demodulator, a dedicated Linux system, and a C-band 3.5m dish.
Cool hack, nonetheless.
This character clearly spent more time working on his satellite interception system than he did in enlish class!
How long until the us government shuts this kind of stuff down though? Consider the implications if terrorists were to stumble across this slashdot web area on AOL. The information is right here, they could take over the weather satellites and move their orbits to help defend their ground troops!
I recently watched a movie which starred Bruce Willis. He played the role of a US Special Forces Ranger Commando on a Seal Team for the Air Force. They went into a foreign country and removed religeous peoples. While they were talking a walk through the woods, one of Mr. Willis' friends brought his laptop, and used this very same technology to watch for bad guys following them. Now in this case, using the technology was useful in order to defend their party from the roving band of gorilla traders (though they never showed them actually DOING anything with gorillas. Curious!)
This whole concept is like a bicycle with a two stroke engine. It sounds like a good idea until you hear it. Not to mention the sound of the engine!
Anyhoo, remember, Kikoman is good on eggs!
Cool. This site tells us all how to "hack" into the TV stations and get back usable video using our televisions and a broad-band antenna.
Here's one of the first images done in 1926. Of course, this weather image didn't come from a satellite, but they've been doing this stuff for a long time!
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
The Remote Imaging Group is the place to go for information on all aspects of this hobby.
surely theres a technical reason, but i'm still curious. whats preventing me from getting any old radio (like my typical home stereo reciever), tuning to AM frequency 137.50mhz or whatever it was, and just doing line out to the soundcard so that little proggy can do its work? i imagine i'd need a big honkin antennae, but is there something different about these special recievers that they do differently than any other AM reciever?
Not an option at all. I cannot get outside at the 45 story highrise downtown building our offices are in. We are tenants of about 6 floors, there is no "outside" that belongs to us or we have access too.
The same is true in the other sites I manage; tenants of large, otherwise sealed buildings.
I'd love to do what you suggest, but it is simply not an option. I'd be just thrilled with the nearest airport temperature data.
Those are edited to remove all of the secret government/alien bases and such. Much cooler looking at the original untouched satellite feeds.
Now that you've "hacked" a weather satellite, how long till Ashcroft and Co. deem you an enemy combatant?
-needs to be-
Now that you've hacked a "weather satellite", how long till Ashcroft and Co. deem you an enemy combatant?
forget it.
Any
Pedro
----
The Insomniac Coder
For those wondering, Satellite Comm techs in the USArmy fall under MOS 31S (it used to be 29Y but it was changed when I was still in the service).
I got to see a few hacks like that when I was in the service. The main problem was that the equipment used to downconvert the RF was too godawful expensive! A 19" rack with just a down converter, a patch panel, a HP spectrum analyzer and a custom DEC drawer was over $300K.
Later we found out there was a card you could plug into a normal retail PC that allowed us to connect to the IEEE-488 data acquisition bus in the spectrum analyzer. Next step was finding the API for talking to the spectrum analyzer and we eventually built our own system without the need for that damn DEC. Suddenly a $300K rack unit got replaced by a PC (it was an AST Pentium 133, ah, the days!) with a $400 or so IEEE-488 card and a $20-50K spectrum analyzer (no, I still have no clue why it was so damn expensive).
That was 10 years ago, I would not be surprised if the whole thing can be done for a few grand.
Pedro
----
The Insomniac Coder
Well, this doesn't seem like that hard of a task, but there is a lot to do with launch dynamics. I'm an ameture model rocketist myself, so I'll try my best to explain it.
.5mv^2 (you should remember this from high school physics). We also know we need a little bit more to escape gravity, since traveling at exactly the same speed as gravity would put you in neutral. so... .5mv^2 > 0 .5mv^2 is equal to Ma)
First, we list our obsticles: that damned atmotsphere we need to live, the gravity that holds us to the ground, weight-to-fuel ratio.
The atmostphere is no problem really, just build a rocket with a conic head, besides if you can get anything up to the right speed, the shape won't matter (unless it's an inverted cone or a flat surface...).
Next, we deal with gravity. It works on all objects on earth at about 9.8m/s^2, which is a royal pain in the A$$ when trying to move heavy objects upwards... therefore, we must keep the weight down. This is done by making our rocket put out a HUGE amount of power per kilogram, because we have to take it up to escape velocity (the speed in which the objects forward force is greater than the force of gravity pulling it down).
Let's do the math to figure out escape velocity:
The maximum amount of work done on a falling body that's falling from infinity (no atmosphere), is the GPE of the object: Ma = Mass of rocket, Mb = mass of planet to escape, G = newton's gravitational constant, or 6.67e-11, and r is the radius of the planet.
-G(Ma)(Mb)/r
Now, we also know if we want to make an object escape this gravity pit, we have to give it just enough kinetic energy, using
-G(Ma)(Mb)/r +
Now, since we need a velocity, let's solve for V.. (take note: the m in
.5(Ma)v^2 = G(Ma)(Mb)/r,
(Ma)v^2 = 2G(Ma)(Mb)/r,
v^2 = 2G(Mb)/r,
v = sqrt (2G(Mb)) Tada, we have our equation.
Now, this gives you about 11182 meters per second. Factor in the air resistance, and we probably need to take it up at least another third of that if we can, so about 15k m/s. This represents a HUGE obsticle.. because the heavier the object we present it, the harder we have to work to get it to that speed. For More information, email me, or visit my website, ill have this posted soon. Laterz
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
The first setup used a geared motor driving a drum (made from a rolling ping) that had tinfoil wrppaed around, with electrostatic fax paper on top of that. It would print the image via a motor driven needle that put a high voltage current to the paper when it recieved a black portion of the image. Omni-directional antenna and a modified scanner completed the rig.
I wish I still had my copy of "The Weather Satellite Handbook".
73 de VE6LSH
You can use HamFax to do this under linux. Predict will tell you when the bird will be visible.
n et/kd2bd/predict.html
http://hamfax.sourceforge.net/
http://www.qsl.
73 de VE6LSH
What I really want is instructions on how to build a radio-wave reciever for (terrestrial based) WeatherFax that I can just plug into my parallel port and decode in the computer.
The antenna can just be a coilable peice of wire 3m long or so.. That+laptop=weatherfax on the boat!
But all I lack is software and hardware.
?!?!?
Not bitching & not karma-whoring. I've played with sending and receiving slow-scan tv, which is similar. I haven't been doing it for fity years like some posters, but I don't see you griping about them.
It is fine that slashdot posted this & the link they had was good. For older stuff like this, it is even cooler when they post a few links to different articles.
hate to burst the bubble... dont know there really is a bubble to burst.... there have been people making pc cards that do this for ages... you take a simple gps style egg antenna.. run in via bnc to the card.. and run some software to plan reception times.. decode the pic and bada bing its done... and btw... the noaa people broad cast these horrid pix via a thing called radiofax... it is indeed a fax format.. nothing to special.. with some creativity.. you should be able to run a gps antenna to your pc , pick a port... an old sound card w/fax capability should work fine with some mods... you should be able to get some good specs using google, and the term radiofax http://www.dolphinmaritime.com/pcwin/wpcradiofax.h tm
this place looks promising... says use there software plus a ssb reciever plugged into your sound card..
i hackd in 2 gubmin sadelines an got free pix of ur mom
Just thought I'd mention it :)
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Many of you already have what it takes to receive these satellites. Many police scanners such as the Realistic 2006 have an FM wideband mode that works just fine. Take the audio (data) out of the headphone jack. Simply try tuning your scanner into the frequencies in the article and set the scanner for wideband FM. Leave it for a while with the squelch just barely set and it's very likely that as the satellite comes over your horizon, you'll hear the 'tick tick' he speaks of. Usually a lower gain scanner antenna is best (Radio Shack sells a discone for about 60 bucks) because higher gain antennas compress the vertical lobe to get more gain on the horizon (and for space reception you WANT tha antenna to "look up" into the sky.
Specifically, that will work in X Windows, by all means send me an email. Figure out my email by the username of my URL (which is dead) and the FQDN....send me an email if you ever get one...i'd be really interested in this.
If there is one, I'm too lazy to look, heh.
//FIXME: Bad
Damm It I want military satalites not weather ones... I wanna be able to watch myself typing at my own computer
This weather satellite stuff is interesting, but until the govt is forced to stop providing weather and satellite info to the citizens because it competes with private business, until then, I won't have to worry about it.
What I'd like to see is some software and a hardware (antenna) hookup to my computer for me to caputure and process streams of real time stock trades on all markets, NYSE, Nasdaq, CBT, Options, Dow Jones news, other news, etc., basically everything stock related.
I know the streams are there, as there are receivers that receive and decode the data as am or fm signals. It's just a matter of capuring the signal (easy, hookup to rooftop antenna), and the software to process it. The software is out there, but has anyone hacked it? Gnu/linux please. Windows is no longer used in my network.
...well you could launch your own satellite, but because of the new "war on tarism" you would have to build your rocket using one million of those new 62.5 gram rocket motors. Just some minor technical engineering details, that's all....
And I checked the fine print, those FOOLS left something out, it's NOT illegal to build your own super scalar planeteary defense beams. Those neurally challeneged polidrones, hiring non geek lawyers to write all them new laws....heh heh heh
..last I knew you could still get raw feeds with a big dish and appropriate receiver. I don't know if any of the major networks scramble their signal, last I watched any was several years ago now. Someone here probably has more up to date knowledge I'm sure. The raw feeds frequently don't (didn't) have commercials, you can see them talking and b.s.ing, etc during that time.
yo man! those blue collar guys who ride the scaffoldings up and down and clean the windows? Think they might epoxy glue or drill and expander bolt your outside weather transmitter dealie, with maybe a tiny solar panel and a LiOn batt connected to all that stuff, out on the wall of the building someplace for a sawbuck or two?
And from that far away, ain't no boss action even gonna see the thing from the ground. Just make sure whatever you decide for a mount WORKS. Over engineer that part.
And I never saw this post, because it's "academic and research purposes only".
For those that don't want to worry about when the satellite is passing overhead and happen to live in the US (or thereabouts), consider EMWIN, the Emergency Managers' Weather Information Network. You can receive data by satellite, radio, or Internet. NOAA has links to schematics, free software (with source) and other good information.
You know, the government ought to collect and disseminate the temperature data that the National Weather Service collects in a computer parseable format via anonymous ftp.
Oh wait, they do. They even provide you with loads of docs that will tell you more than you ever wanted to know about the format of government weather data.
What the heck is an AM antenna?
I believe these are the same antenna's a lot of use for downconverting AO40's 2.4 ghz s2 transponder - which is a passband transponder - usually USB.
You're kidding. wx200d just reflects data from the serial port out to the clients. If you want the full batch, you have to wait. Just hope you don't have any sensors on the fringe, or you may be waiting a long time to get the whole update.
The obvious improvement would be for wx200d to decode and cache the data, then provide it to clients upon request. That lets them come and go (think cron jobs) without any delay. What a concept!
There is one thing though. I've been wanting to write a full featured weather package compariable to what's available on the Windows side.
However I've found the technical information to pull this off rather scarce, or widely scattered. i.e Information sources, file formats, etc.
Any ideas?
An appealing idea, but not exactly simple on a glass curtainwall structure.
Besides, the washers at our building aren't just blue collar, I think they're fresh out of prison or something.
File formats aren't your primary concern (As a meteorologist, when you say "full featured" I think of plotting surface and upper air observations and model output). You should be able to get by with processing text (station and upper air output) and GRIB format data. There are numerous GRIB readers available (except maybe for Java). A couple of places I'd suggest looking are:
www.weathergraphics.com - I'd make it a link but it's not coming up right now. Tim Vasquez wrote the popular "Digital Atmosphere". You can look to his site to see where to get data.
Unidata Community Portal (free reg required). Go to "downloads" and look at GEMPAK. The IDV is written in Java and could be a jumping off point but it uses the VisAD library which has a huge learning curve. There are other downloads which may be of interest to you as well.
Good luck!
I did this in 1988 with a pk232 TNC and a el-cheapo worldband reciever.
This is nothing new, nothing special, and a much lower quality than most equipment that can already be had for a total of less than $100.00 at any hamfest.
Why is this news again? Ham radio operators have been doing it cince sattelites existed.
What about C.H.I.M.P.?