Slashdot Mirror
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."
Are available here.
Takes a bit more equipment, though.
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...
Once again slashdot stumbles upon an already popular hobby. http://www.scnt01426.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Articles /WXSAT/wxsat.htm
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.
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.
Here ya go
www.amsat.org
We use it all the time in Antarctica. I'm sure it is useful other places not covered by weather.com. You have to have line of sight on the sat, it has to have line of sight on the weather, so the range is limited, but good enough. The pixel size is huge, so it's no good for spying.
It does do both IR and visible, so you can get the temp/height of the clouds too.
'SBEMAIL!' is better than a goat!!
I ported the wx200d communication code to BSD a year ago. Good software!
Pat
You can already receive sat images off the HF bands if you have the right gear. It's slow but doable.
You have to remember these are weather satellites. An extreme high resolution image is not yet available, even with professional equipment. The GOES series satellite have a 1km per pixel resolution for the current GOES 8 and GOES 10 satellites. In about 10 years 10m or possibly 1m resolution satellites are going up. With the American Goes satellites it will not be possible to watch the irag decimation. They simply aren't in a place on the Earth where they can view it, and GOES 8 will probably being moving even further away in April. None of the GOES data is encrypted or delayed so an instantaneous feed is available, but keep in mind it can take anywhere from 5 minutes to 45 minutes for an image to be completed depending on the region of the earth being scanned. Also keep in mind that you'll need software that understands the GVAR format in order to see the data from the GOES satellites. I work with these satellites everyday, it is non-trivial without the right software to use the data.
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
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.