Tagged: Meteor-M2

r2Cloud: Software for Automatically Decoding APT/LRPT Weather Satellites and Cubesats on a Raspberry Pi with RTL-SDR

Thanks to a tweet by @rf_hacking we recently came across an interesting project called "r2cloud". This is an open source program provided on a ready to use image for the Raspberry Pi that can be used to set up an automated satellite recording station for NOAA APT and Meteor LRPT signals, as well as for CubeSats.

The software presents a web based user interface that is easy to setup and view decoded images on. It appears that the software also communicates with a public server that can aggregate and log your data, and also provide it to SatNOGS and provide FunCube satellite telemetry to FunCube Warehouse.

Block Diagram for the r2cloud software.
Block Diagram for the r2cloud software.

Weather Satellite Meteor M2-2 Now Transmitting Images

Reports from Reddit and Twitter are in that the recently launched Meteor M2-2 weather satellite is now functional and broadcasting images at 137.9 MHz. A few people have noted that the reception quality appears to be better than the older satellite.

Thank you to Happysat whose also provided the following information that can be used to receive the images. It appears that a slightly modified version of LRPTDecoder is required:

This version of LRPTDecoder was used to test/debug OQPSK with Meteor M-N2-1 in 2014, it will work on Meteor M-N2-2.
The ini file attached in the archive is processed manually from s files.
Buttons 72K and 80K respectively for the modes “without interleaving” and “with interleaving”.
Also in the archive there are examples for other modes.

Transmissions on LRPT with a OQPSK Modulation are expected tomorrow on most probably 137.900MHz.

Make sure you have version 1.9 of the Meteor QPSK Plugin running in SDRSharp.
http://rtl-sdr.ru/uploads/download/meteor.zip

Changelog:
Optimized QPSK demodulator, OQPSK signal for receiving current and future Meteor.

For people running Tracking DDE Client Plugin make sure you have the following entries in the scheduler:

METEOR-M2_2

radio_Start
radio_modulation_type<wfm>
radio_center_frequency_Hz<138380050>
radio_frequency_Hz<137900000>
radio_bandwidth_Hz<90000>
OQPSK_demodulator_Start
send_tracking_frequency_On

Edit to your path! for MeteorGIS Custom ini file start_programm_Path<C:\Meteor\MeteorGIS\MeteorGIS.exe>

Edit to your path! for MeteorGIS Custom ini file start_programm_Path<C:\Meteor\MeteorGIS\MeteorGIS_M_N2-2.bat>

Edit to your path! Without MeteorGIS start_programm_Path<C:\AMIGOS\run.bat>

send_Tracking_Frequency_Off
OQPSK_demodulator_Stop
radio_Stop

Download:

https://cloud.mail.ru/public/2Se9/9bj36m6AP

Mirror:

http://happysat.nl/2015.3.20.15.zip

Спасибо Олегу, Нцомз и Роскосмосу!

Happysat

Meteor M N2-2 Successfully Launched: Awaiting LRPT Signal

On July 5 the Russian Meteor M N2-2 weather satellite was successfully launched into orbit and appears to be healthy. The LRPT weather camera signal is not yet broadcasting however, and we expect it to still take roughly 1-2 months before it begins (if all goes well) as satellites typically run through a long list of qualification tests before becoming operational. During this time there may be broadcasts of test patterns that can be caught. Meteor M N2-2 can currently be tracked in Orbitron and online at N2YO.

To try and dispel any confusion over the naming scheme, "Meteor M N2" is the currently operational LRPT satellite. "Meteor M N2-1" unfortunately failed in 2017 as it did not separate from the rocket. "Meteor M N2-2" is the new satellite which has just been successfully launched. Meteor M N2 and M N2-2 is often abbreviated as just "Meteor M2" and "Meteor M2-2". In the past there was Meteor M N1, but this satellite is no longer operational. We have upcoming launches for Meteor M2-3, M2-4, MP-1 and M3 to look forward to which are scheduled for 2020 and 2021.

Back on June 28 we posted about how Meteor M2 was experiencing orientation issues for a few days. Those issues appear to have been rectified now. Hopefully if M2 remains stable we'll have two Meteor LRPT weather satellites to receive alongside the three NOAA APT satellites.

If you're interested, there were also several other payloads onboard the rocket carrying M2-2, including a low cost Czech experimental cubesat called Lucky7 whose telemetry can be received in the amateur radio band at 437.525 MHz. There is an onboard camera too, but no details on how to receive it yet.

Soyuz Rocket carrying Meteor M2-2 Launched successfully. [Source: spaceflightnow]

Meteor M2 is Currently Experiencing Orientation Issues

Russian weather satellite Meteor M2 is a popular reception target for RTL-SDR radio enthusiasts, as it allows you to receive high resolution images of the Earth. However, currently it appears to be exhibiting orientation issues, causing off center and skewed images and sometimes poor/no reception. Russian blog "aboutspacejornal", writes that the orientation of the satellite can sometimes be restored presumably by a reset command from Earth, but shortly after goes back into uncontrolled rotation.

These sorts of off-axis images were commonly received from the older decommissioned Meteor-M1 satellite, which woke up from the dead in 2015. The resurrection was speculated to be from the batteries shorting out, allowing power to directly flow from the solar panels while in full sunlight. These days Meteor-M1 is no longer transmitting.

Meteor M2 proving the curvature of the earth due to it's orientation issues.
Meteor M2 proving the curvature of the earth due to it's orientation issues.  Image source aboutspacejornal.

Hopefully Meteor-M2 can be fixed, but if not, Meteor M2-2 is due to be launched on July 5 which should also have an LRPT signal that can be received easily with an RTL-SDR. Hopefully the launch is more successful than the November 2017 launch of Meteor M2-1 which unfortunately was a complete loss as it failed to separate from the rocket.

Video Showing How to Decode Meteor M2 with an SDRPlay in Windows

Thanks to "Lolo sdr" for submitting his videos that show his process for receiving and decoding Meteor M2 weather satellite images in Windows with an SDRplay and SDR-Console V3. Since the SDRplay is not supported by SDR#, it is not possible to use Vasilli's excellent Meteor Demodulator plugin (site in Russian, please use the Google Translate option) which is only available for SDR#.

Lolo's method gets around this limitation by initially recording an IQ file of the satellite pass in SDR-Console V3, then opening that IQ file in SDR# via the Fileplayer plugin, which is also by Vasilli and available here. The process is a bit of extra work, and the image isn't live, but the image comes out clearly in the end.

The videos are shown below, and subtitles are available in English, French and Italian via the YouTube player options.

Recibir y decodificar Satélite Meteor M2 con SDRplay, parte 1 de 2, grabar el pase, con subtitulos.

Recibir y decodificar Satélite Meteor M2 con SDRplay, parte 2 de 2, decodificar imagen y corrección.

A Complete Linux based Receiver and Decoder Application for Meteor M2

Thank you to Neoklis (5B4AZ) for writing in and letting us know about his recently completed project which is a RTL-SDR compatible receiver and decoder application for the Meteor M2 weather satellite. It is a combination of other open source programs and he writes:

I combined the recently released Meteor-M2 LRPT demodulator by Davide Belloli (dbdexter-dev), and the older image decoder (translated to C) released by Artem Litvinovich (artlav), with relevant code from my own "sdrx" SDR Receiver application to create a complete monolithic Meteor-M2 Receiver and Image Decoder application, "glrpt".

Neoklis' glrpt application is available on his website www.5b4az.org under the "Weather Imaging -> Meteor M LRPT Receiver" menu. The application is open source and appears to be Linux only. In order to install it you'll need to download and compile the source code, and compilation instructions are available in the documentation stored in the doc folder. Neoklis also writes that you can find his older APT image decoder called "xwxapt" under the same Weather Imaging heading of his website.

GLRPT User Interface Showing Processed Meteor M2 Images
GLRPT User Interface Showing Processed Meteor M2 Images

New GNU Radio Block for Decoding Meteor M2 Images

Thank you to Reiichiro Nakano for submitting news about his work on converting the Pascal based meteor_decoder software into a C++ GNU Radio block. meteor_decoder is a decoder for the Meteor M2 weather image satellite. Meteor M2 is a Russian weather satellite that transmits images down in the digital LRPT format. This provides much higher resolution images compared to the NOAA APT signals. With an RTL-SDR, appropriate satellite antenna and decoding software it is possible to receive these images.

Reiichiro works for Infostellar, which appears to be a Japanese company aiming to connect satellites to the internet via distributed and shared ground stations. It appears to be somewhat similar to the SatNOGs project. Reiichiro writes:

Just wanted to share a simple project I built for my company Infostellar, in the past week. I converted https://github.com/artlav/meteor_decoder to C++ and placed it within a GNURadio block for direct decoding of Meteor M2 images. It's a sink that expects soft QPSK demodulated signed bytes. Once the flowgraph stops running, it parses out received packets and dumps the received Meteor images in a specified location. 

The block is part of our Starcoder repository and can be installed from here (https://github.com/infostellarinc/starcoder/blob/master/gr-starcoder/lib/meteor_decoder_sink_impl.cc ).

A Lightweight Meteor M2 Demodulator

Over on GitHub dbdexter-dev has released a new lightweight and open source Meteor M2 demodulator. Meteor M2 is a Russian weather satellite that transmits images down in the digital LRPT format. This provides much higher resolution images compared to the NOAA APT signals. With an RTL-SDR, appropriate satellite antenna and decoding software it is possible to receive these images.

This new lightweight demodulator may be especially useful for single board PCs like the Raspberry Pi. Previously, on Linux GNU Radio based demodulators have been used, and GNU Radio isn't exactly a light weight piece of software. To use the software you first need to record an IQ file of the Meteor M2 LRPT signal, downsample the IQ file to 140 kHz (if required), then pass it into the demodulator. This will spit out an 8-bit soft-QPSK file which can be used with LRPTofflinedecoder (now known as M2_LRPT_Decoder) on Windows or meteor_decoder on Linux to generate an image.

An Example LRPT Image Received with an RTL-SDR from the Meteor-2 M2.
An Example LRPT Image Received with an RTL-SDR from Meteor-2 M2.