
Receiving NOAA Weather Satellite Images with $10 USB SDR Device (2014) [video] - peter_d_sherman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0efTTWMl3v0
======
rz2k
This is really interesting, and it should also be noted that NOAA's mission
and ability to provide weather data directly to US citizens is in jeopardy.
Rather than paying for it just once through their taxes, there is an effort to
charge fees for public access so that companies which repackage weather data
can serve forecasts with ads and gather users' data.

[https://blog.ucsusa.org/andrew-rosenberg/conflicts-of-
intere...](https://blog.ucsusa.org/andrew-rosenberg/conflicts-of-interest-
noaas-nominees-accuweather-ceo-barry-myers-and-dr-neil-jacobs-of-panasonic)

edit: If the Union of Concerned Scientists is too ideological (?):

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-06-14/trump-
s-p...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-06-14/trump-s-pick-to-
lead-weather-agency-spent-30-years-fighting-it)

~~~
casefields
The word "fee" is nowhere to be found in your linked source. Way to dump a
link and pretend your complaint is backed up by a political piece attacking a
nominated federal official. That's a republished article by Common Dreams,
which is a left-wing version of Breitbart.

[https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/10/12/conflicts-
inte...](https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/10/12/conflicts-interest-
noaas-nominees-accuweather-ceo-barry-myers-and-dr-neil-jacobs)

~~~
dgacmu
You seem to have it backwards: common dreams republished the UCS article.

I just read it, and it appears entirely relevant to what the poster was
talking about -- efforts to prevent NOAA from providing high-quality data
products directly to the public.

------
josephgl
A $10 SDR device sure, but then he’s using a $200+ antenna!

There is a link in the video description for a DIY alternative, but its a
little intimidating for a beginner like me (there are no WIP pictures!)

Anyone have any tips/links for someone interested in building a DIY, lower
cost antenna for receiving these weather satellite signals?

~~~
viraptor
You can make them pretty easily. I made a qfh one for ~$30 worth of PVC and
cable.
[https://photos.app.goo.gl/TLMZWZmkAuBJtUPz6](https://photos.app.goo.gl/TLMZWZmkAuBJtUPz6)

Similar to what this person's doing: [https://www.instructables.com/id/NOAA-
Satellite-Signals-with...](https://www.instructables.com/id/NOAA-Satellite-
Signals-with-a-PVC-QFH-Antenna-and-/)

~~~
uxp
Here's a more rigid version that uses bendable copper pipe with sweat (solder)
fit joints.

[http://tinhatranch.com/how-to-build-a-qfh-quadrifilar-
helix-...](http://tinhatranch.com/how-to-build-a-qfh-quadrifilar-helix-
antenna-to-download-images-from-weather-satellites/)

~~~
maxerickson
A fun article would be to compare a poorly constructed one to one that minds
the mm's.

------
ce4
In case anyone prefers text, here's a tutorial from 2013 about the same topic:

[https://www.rtl-sdr.com/rtl-sdr-tutorial-receiving-noaa-
weat...](https://www.rtl-sdr.com/rtl-sdr-tutorial-receiving-noaa-weather-
satellite-images/)

------
chrisswanda
You can use an el-cheapo radio and sstv software to receive images from the
International Space Station also.

[https://streamable.com/q9oa0](https://streamable.com/q9oa0)

------
reaperducer
Back in my shortwave days, we would do this with regular short wave radios and
whatever home computer you had — Commodore 64, Apple ][, etc... Much simpler,
and cheaper.

I think the service was called WEFAX, but my memory is a little hazy. It was
used to send weather maps and satellite photos to ships at sea.

Does this still exist on shortwave, or is it all on satellite now?

~~~
urubu
It's still very much alive on shortwave. Here's a US ham demoing it:
[https://youtu.be/ZB1Fz294aLw](https://youtu.be/ZB1Fz294aLw)

------
c0nducktr
I'm in the process of setting up an antenna for receiving data from the
GOES-15 weather satellite.

I'm just starting out but got inspired after watching this video (no
affiliation with the channel).

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGWFg7EDnyY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGWFg7EDnyY)

People have been able to get some stunning pictures of the earth from those
satellites.

Examples:
[https://i.redd.it/xbahbl7egel11.jpg](https://i.redd.it/xbahbl7egel11.jpg)

[https://i.redd.it/66bf60ika2s11.jpg](https://i.redd.it/66bf60ika2s11.jpg)

[https://www.nnvl.noaa.gov/NESDIS/site/images/20180520-G17geo...](https://www.nnvl.noaa.gov/NESDIS/site/images/20180520-G17geocolor.png)

If you're interested, check out r/rtlsdr, which is where I first was
introduced to the hobby. It's full of helpful people.

------
Taniwha
When I was a kid (back in the 70s) we built hardware to do this - essentially
it was:

\- an old TV pulled apart so the tube could be driver directly \- horizontal
sync detector that reset the horizontal beam on the TV and advanced the
vertical \- an FSK->analog to drive the spot amplitude as it swept across the
TV \- a VHF receiver \- someone with a homemade antenna pointing it at the
sky, tracking manually by listening for the noise floor \- a camera in a dark
room and an operator who would open the aperture and start taking a photo when
the pass started and closed it when the beam hot the bottom of the TV

We did sat tracking on the local uni's mainframe so we knew where in the sky
and when a pass would start. The satellites in those days made low passes and
essentially took line by line of image as they moved thru their orbits. We
could also get world wide images from a geostationary satellite that gave us
12 images made by stitching everything together (and whiting out all the
communist countries).

In those days a ground station cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and were
essentially (pre-commercial) faxes that printed on paper - our photos were
higher quality

------
Gladdyu
So will it be possible to combine this with amazon's new groundstation-as-a-
service?

~~~
chrismeller
No... Groundstation is intended for receiving from your own satellite.

~~~
52-6F-62
This might be a bit pedestrian of me, but I hope they’re not trying to
encourage too many satellite launches... I think we just need improved and
more open shared architecture.

------
JoeDaDude
Another brief tutorial here:

[https://blog.nobugware.com/post/2015/listening_to_satellites...](https://blog.nobugware.com/post/2015/listening_to_satellites_for_30_dollars/)

------
dtx1
Are there any european weather satelites available like this aswell?

------
sydd
Reddit has a really nice community of rtl-sdr enthusiatist
[http://www.reddit.com/r/RTLSDR](http://www.reddit.com/r/RTLSDR)

------
pizza
rtl-sdr dongles are awesome. I piped the audio output of mine into the audio
input for Ableton Live. Then I start channel hopping, record a few minutes of
FM radio, then stop recording and use Ableton's slice audio feature to chop it
up into a group of samples. This way I can instantly get new 'instruments'
literally out of thin air!

Also one time I was browsing different frequencies and I happened to stumble
upon some conversation between two strangers. Neat what you can find.

~~~
JshWright
Get your ham license and you too can have conversations with strangers (and a
whole lot more). ~KD2CEL

------
fortyseven
Good lord, that background music got ridiculous. Had to close it out.

~~~
craftyguy
Yea, it was difficult to hear him in quite a few cases because the
'background' music was conflicting with his softer voice.

------
gabesk
If you want to live vicariously through others, various people publish live
images of captures over their locations on
[https://wxtoimgrestored.xyz/gallery/](https://wxtoimgrestored.xyz/gallery/)
In particular, being on the west coast I'm fond of watching
[http://wzdave.com/apt/index.html](http://wzdave.com/apt/index.html)

Also, you don't need a USB SDR per se; the Baofengs will work fine as its just
an FM audio signal. The video shows this, but for reference, the three
satellites transmitting APT pictures:

[https://www.heavens-
above.com/SatInfo.aspx?satid=25338&lat=0...](https://www.heavens-
above.com/SatInfo.aspx?satid=25338&lat=0&lng=0&loc=Unspecified&alt=0&tz=UCT)

[https://www.heavens-
above.com/SatInfo.aspx?satid=28654&lat=0...](https://www.heavens-
above.com/SatInfo.aspx?satid=28654&lat=0&lng=0&loc=Unspecified&alt=0&tz=UCT)

[https://www.heavens-
above.com/SatInfo.aspx?satid=33591&lat=0...](https://www.heavens-
above.com/SatInfo.aspx?satid=33591&lat=0&lng=0&loc=Unspecified&alt=0&tz=UCT)

As others have mentioned, you don't need a fancy antenna; even a car magnetic
mount 2-meter ham radio antenna will work to an extent; the problem and fun
part about this is it's wonderfully analong ... any noise in the signal shows
up at snow in the picture, and if your antenna isn't circularly polarized, the
strength will fade in and out as the satellite moves over the horizon. Still,
it works well enough to try out. In fact, even the rubber duck on the Baofeng
will kind of work if its a high elevation pass (70-90 degress) as the
satellite is closer and has less atmospheric attenuation. A trick I've done in
the past is just to record the output of the Baofeng on your phone's voice
memo app and play it back later when you're back inside.

Finally, it's worth noting that APT (the tech in this video) is somewhat
deprecated, but if you have an SDR already, for somewhat more effort you can
receive the digital equivalent [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-
rate_picture_transmission](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-
rate_picture_transmission)

Edit:

The frequencies NOAA 15 137.62MHz NOAA 18 137.9125MHz NOAA 19 137.10MHz

Also, if you're using a Baofeng, set it to wideband FM in the menu. The APT
signal has fairly wide FM modulation compared to most terrestrial voice FM,
and even wideband mode won't be enough. It'll still work in any case, but has
the effect that the contrast of the picture is somewhat clipped the narrower
your receive bandwidth is.

~~~
sitzkrieg
Thanks for the detailed response, going to try it with cheapo rubber duck just
to see how it does!

