
DIY Satellite Ground Station to Receive NOAA Images - cromulent
https://publiclab.org/notes/sashae/06-26-2020/diy-satellite-ground-station
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btashton
You can also get with some more work the much higher resolution HIRT images
from the GOES sats. It's kind or fun to mess with. I used it as an excuse to
mess with offloading the error correction to an FPGA, which was fun but also
totally unnecessary.

[https://pietern.github.io/goestools/guides/minimal_receiver....](https://pietern.github.io/goestools/guides/minimal_receiver.html)

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gardenfelder
The parabolic grid antenna in that link does not appear to be available

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aseidl
You can get by with one designed for 2.4GHz wifi if those are easier to
acquire. They were < $50 on Amazon when I did my build a year or so ago.

Just have to flatten the front a bit and push it out by about an inch. I used
a short piece of pvc pipe and some zipties.

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Taniwha
We used to do this back in the mid 70s, we built a VHF receiver (and someone
outside in the frost with a big antenna listening to the noise floor and
tracking) - the signal was an analog FSK (you can kind of imagine it as a
single light sensor and the satellite spinning, getting 1 scan line per
revolution) - we'd feed the signal to a TV in a dark room with a manual
vertical sync button, and with a camera pointing at it.

As the signal started someone would press the sync button and someone else
would open the camera shutter when the pass was done we'd close the shutter
and wind the film on, we'd get 2-3 passes a night,at around midnight we'd
develop the film.

There was also a much faster broadcast around midnight from a geostationary
satellite - 12 images (4 around the equator and 4 around the poles) with the
communist countries carefully blanked out, you had to change the scanning
rates and be nimble with the camera.

It was fun and the alternative was a close to $1m fax ground station (this was
before faxes were something most people had even seen)

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phreeza
> (and someone outside in the frost with a big antenna listening to the noise
> floor and tracking)

I've wondered about this, why were consumer satellite dishes so huge back in
the day, and now we seem to be able to get away with much smaller ones?

Is the transmitter power on to he satellites higher than it used to be? Or is
it better receiver electronics? Or better algorithms/codecs?

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karmicthreat
Also we have increases the frequencies that we use. Back then it was C-Band,
now everyone is using Ku or higher.

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mthoms
I think this is really cool, I'm genuinely curious if there's any advantage of
it versus getting the image from NOAA's website?

In other words, is there any data or imagery gathered this way that you can't
get from NOAA? (I realize there would be a slight delay before the imagery is
available from NOAA).

I'm not trying to take anything away from this awesome project, I'm just
curious.

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reaperducer
It's useful for places where there is no internet connectivity, or where
connectivity is very expensive. For example, ships at sea, to whom this sort
of information is most important.

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jaimex2
[https://zoom.earth](https://zoom.earth) if you just want to see the recent
images.

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xhrpost
Wow, if you zoom in really far, the resolution seems to exceed that of Google
maps. I can make out shingles on roofs of homes, so it must be what, a quarter
foot res?

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alexchamberlain
Are images received from satellites like this free to use, or does some
license apply?

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Rebelgecko
Imagery that the government chooses to release is typically public domain. Our
tax dollars at work.

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mkr-hn
If you like this, there's a subreddit for you:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/RTLSDR/](https://www.reddit.com/r/RTLSDR/)

Other NOAA-related projects:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/RTLSDR/search?q=NOAA&restrict_sr=on...](https://www.reddit.com/r/RTLSDR/search?q=NOAA&restrict_sr=on&sort=relevance&t=all)

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zymhan
And if you want to put that RTL-SDR to a specific use by tracking airplanes,
you should check out
[https://www.reddit.com/r/ADSB/](https://www.reddit.com/r/ADSB/)

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weagle05
I've been trying to do this with my son for a few weeks. I haven't been able
to get any of the Mac compatible SDR tools to work with Catalina. I haven't
tried it yet but our next step is using GNU Radio with a RaspPi

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zymhan
Have you trying installing GNU Radio via macports? That may help.

[https://wiki.gnuradio.org/index.php/MacInstall#Prerequisite:...](https://wiki.gnuradio.org/index.php/MacInstall#Prerequisite:_X11.app.2C_recommended_via_XQuartz)

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reaperducer
This seems like a lot of work.

We used to do this with a $30 shortwave radio and a Commodore 64.

Maybe the NOAA WEFAX transmissions aren't in shortwave anymore?

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kbr2000
Good times, I've done this with DWD (German meteorological service) in the
90s, using HamComm [0]

This project in the article however, listens directly to satellites, and not
to a LF/HF ground-based station like we used to do.

[0]
[https://www.pervisell.com/ham/hc1.htm](https://www.pervisell.com/ham/hc1.htm)

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kbr2000
Oops, lost my memory there for a bit: it was probably using the same DIY
"Hamcomm modem", and using JVFAX (or similar) software running under DOS.

