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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."
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.
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?
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'll second that. HAMs have been doing this for decades. It's not rocket science. Also, with the easy to find images on the web these days it is at best a way to kill time.
Yoda of Borg am I! Assimilated shall you be! Futile resistance is, hmm?
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.
When you can check the weather by going outside http://www.ramseyelectronics.com/cgi-bin/commerce. exe?preadd=action&key=ws5000
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.
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.
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.
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!
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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
ok.
1)get satalite companent
2) build satalit
3)get large rocket
4)send satalite to space.
5)Profit!!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Yep. They are, in effect, a publis service of the U.S. Government. Anybody who wants to can receive their signals and do what they will with them. The signal format itself is based on the 1960s-era TIROS format, but keeping it simple means that even dirt poor countries can get weather satellite data.
I do my own: have a look at some pretty (if a little stale) pictures of mine. I wrote my own sound card demodulator program. Linux, of course...
...laura