New NOAA APT Image Decoder
Over on GitHub user martinber has released a new NOAA APT image decoder that can run on both Linux and Windows. The decoder is called noaa-apt and takes a .WAV file of a NOAA satellite pass, and turns it into an image file. The .WAV file can be recorded in any SDR program like SDR#, HDSDR, GQRX etc. The program is programmed in Rust, and has ready to run binaries available for both Linux and Windows available on it's GitHub Releases page.
Compared to the features found in WXtoIMG the software is fairly basic, but as WXtoIMG has been abandoned it's good to see new APT decoders still being worked on. The software can also be used to simply resample the .WAV file into a sample rate required by other more featured decoders like aptdec.
NOAA weather satellites broadcast an Automatic Picture Transmission (APT) signal, which contains a live weather image of your area. With an RTL-SDR and antenna they can be received and downloaded every time one of the satellite's passes overhead. We have a tutorial on using an RTL-SDR with WXtoIMG available here.
I am not a programmer and at over 70 I will not become one. But I am curious and have tried the intriguing world of Terminal several times. It is not for me! It would be so nice to have an easy to install program on OSx 14 Sonoma for the new Macs. Will you young people help us?
Just a warning to anyone thinking of installing the old Weather to Image WxtoImg software, it is malware, and the restored website as scanned with virustotal.com contains a few files of malware, not sure if that is because the manager themselves are malicious actors, or they had been hacked.
I tried installing before scanning and the install window just went away, than I opened task manager and noticed a few high demand tasks in the background, so I disconnected from the internet and did a virus/malware scan with Malwarebytes anti malware and fortunately nothing was found, but just thought I should warn the community.
I recommend using NOAA-APT which is a program derived from the GNU Radio software much safer.
The software that people are complaining about decodes the images in real time as they are being transmitted, and turns the receiver on and off for satellite passes. A static recording decoder does not.
This decodes METEOR images just fine but for some reason the NOAA satellites are producing a bunch of horizontal desyncing. It looks and sounds like there may be some telemetry data in the signal that may be causing this that is absent on METEOR.
It looks like it may actually be linked to recent problems with the NOAA satellites and not necessarily a problem with noaa-apt itself. Hopefully someone will resolve them in the near future.
This program works great wxtoimg is so hard to get setup you have to add plug ins for this and for that to much BS just to decode a wx signal……
I had bad luck decoding the noaa images with wxtoimg (wavy borders, slanted). I tried this and it just worked – nice pictures right out of the gate.
Thats great ian its good you are fine with the software,keep us posted de K5MPH……