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Proposed Unified GNUradio Architecture for SatNOGS Client (satnogs.org)
21 points by elkos on Nov 22, 2015 | hide | past | favorite | 2 comments



What is SatNOGS? I know that GNU Radio is a software defined radio toolkit. From the diagrams and "Sat" part of the name it seems like SatNOGS is some kind of thing for keeping antennas pointed at satellites. But it's hard to figure much else out about what this is and why this is relevant to anyone not already part of the community (in which case they would likely already see it by following the forum).

The link at the upper right doesn't help, since that just brings you to the front page of the forum. I have to Google for "SatNOGS" (or guess that I can delete "community" from the URL) to get to the landing page: https://satnogs.org/ which describes: "DIY Satellite Ground Station and Network - SatNOGS is an open source ground station and network, optimized for modularity, built from readily available and affordable tools and resources."

This helps a little bit, but it still doesn't describe what it does and why. Does this just let you track satellites? Read data being transmitted by them? What types of satellites? What kind of data?

Posting this to HN feels a bit like posting a link to a discussion about a refactoring of the internals of the block device driver in MINIX on its mailing list. Maybe technically interesting to a few people who have context, but a bit puzzling for a wider audience, and with very little context.

I don't mean this to be negative, I'm mostly trying to give constructive criticism that it can help to provide a bit more context, and links to make it easy to find more context, when posting an announcement to a more general audience like HN.


My cynical take is that SatNOGS was a publicity stunt designed to win the Hack-a-day prize. Polished websites; not much substance.




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