Tagged: automatic picture transmission

A Satellite Listening Journey

On his Medium.com blog, Mohsen Tahmasebi has posted an article about his journey into listening to satellites which started with his acquisition of an RTL-SDR Blog V3 dongle. The article begins by explaining his motivations for receiving satellites and how difficult hobbies like this are to get into in his home country of Iran. Despite the challenges he tasted success when he was able to receive NOAA APT signals on his second attempt using the included portable dipole antenna in a V-dipole configuration. Shortly after Mohsen was also able to receive Meteor-M2 LRPT.

Mohsen then built a more permanent V-dipole out of copper rods and optimized his antenna using NEC simulation software, finding that adding a reflector significantly improved reception. He then moved on to building a slightly more complex Turnstile antenna, which yielded even better results and allowed him to explore CubeSats at 435 MHz and contribute to SatNOGS. Finally, Mohsen ordered a Bullseye LNB and using a homemade bias tee, he received the QO-100 amateur radio transponder.

Overall, Mohsen's journey demonstrates that there is a lot of fun and learning available from internationally available satellites even in a country where equipment is hard to come by.

Mohsen's First Permanent V-Dipole for NOAA APT Reception

YouTube Satellite Decoding Series

Over on YouTube @dereksgc has been putting together a comprehensive video series on weather, amateur and other satellite reception. His series starts with receiving images from NOAA APT satellites, then Meteor M2, as then goes on to talk about low cost V-Dipole satellite antennas, how satellite dishes work, and recently how to use Ku-band LNBs with a satellite dish.

If you're getting started with RTL-SDR and satellite reception, this video series may be a good introduction for you.

Downloading images directly from weather satellites || Satellite reception pt.1

Creating An Automated Raspberry Pi and RTL-SDR Based NOAA Weather Satellite Station

The nootropicdesign blog has recently uploaded a comprehensive tutorial showing how to create an automated NOAA Weather Satellite ground station using an RTL-SDR V3 and an Raspberry Pi 3. The project also makes use of an Amazon S3 bucket, which is a cheap web storage platform that allows you to store and access the downloaded images.

The tutorial starts by showing you how to set up your Amazon AWS credentials and bucket on the Raspberry Pi, and how to host a simple webpage that can be accessed publicly. The second stage shows how to set up the RTL-SDR drivers and wxtoimg which is used to decode the images. Finally, the third stage shows how to create the automation scripts that automatically schedule a decode, and upload images to the AWS bucket.

Flowgraph for an automated NOAA satellite weather image station.
Flowgraph for an automated NOAA satellite weather image station.

Instructions for Building a Portable Double Cross Antenna: Great for NOAA/Meteor Weather Satellites

Over on Reddit user merg_flerg has uploaded an imgur post that carefully details a step by step guide for building a double cross antenna. A double cross antenna is great for reception of satellites like NOAA and Meteor since it has a sky oriented radiation pattern with very few nulls. This means that it can receive satellite signals coming from the sky well. Alternative antennas for NOAA/Meteor include turnstiles and QFH antennas, although the double cross antenna seems to have the least nulls, meaning that the signal is less likely to fade in and out as the satellite moves across the sky.

merg_flerg’s design is also modified from the standard design slightly, allowing it to become easily disassembled and carried within a backpack. At the end of his tutorial he writes that he gets much better reception with his double cross antenna than he does with his QFH.

In the post he demonstrates the final constructed antenna decoding a NOAA APT weather satellite image with an RTL-SDR and the WXtoIMG software. See our tutorial for information on decoding NOAA weather satellite images.

The finished double cross antenna connected to a PC running an RTL-SDR and WXtoIMG.
The finished double cross antenna connected to a PC running an RTL-SDR and WXtoIMG.

A Tutorial on Decoding NOAA and Meteor M2 Weather Satellite Images in Ubuntu

Recently an RTL-SDR.com reader by the name of Pete wrote in to let us know about a comprehensive tutorial that he has written about setting up NOAA and Meteor M2 weather satellite decoding in Ubuntu Linux with an RTL-SDR.

Pete’s tutorial starts from a fresh install of Ubuntu and uses GQRX, GNU Radio Companion, WxtoIMG and the MeteorM2 decoding tools. He shows how to set up the audio piping within Linux, how to run the MeteorM2 LRPT Offline decoder Windows tool in Wine, a Linux Windows emulator and how to use WxtoIMG together with GQRX.

The NOAA and Meteor M2 weather satellites transmit images that they have taken of the earth. With an RTL-SDR and appropriate antenna you can receive these images. On this blog we have Windows tutorials on receiving NOAA and Meteor M2 satellites.

The Windows LRPTOfflineDecoder tool running in Linux with Wine.
The Windows LRPTOfflineDecoder tool running in Linux with Wine.