WxCapture
About WxCapture
This website is powered by an open source application, WxCapture, which is responsible for all the satellite tracking, capturing and releasing to this website.
The WxCapture solution was built by Mike (ZL4MDE) and it can be installed from GitHub:
WordPress is also used for most of the front end for the website, including the posts and comments areas. WordPress is open source software and can be downloaded from:
Using this software, anyone can create their own version of this site.
How Does WxCapture Work?
WxCapture is built using Python to perform the following tasks:
- Automatically records passes
- Processes them and stores them
- Transfers them over to a server
- Updates a server webpage to include them
It also uses a number of other open source applications to perform these tasks including:
- Gpredict (http://gpredict.oz9aec.net/) – used to track satellites and to predict passes
- wxtoimg (https://wxtoimgrestored.xyz/) – used to decode NOAA images
- meteor_demod (https://github.com/dbdexter-dev/meteor_demod) – used to demodulate Meteor images
- meteor_decoder (https://github.com/artlav/meteor_decoder) – used to decode Meteor images
- ImageMagick (https://imagemagick.org/index.php) – for image processing
- pavucontrol(https://freedesktop.org/software/pulseaudio/pavucontrol/) – to pipe audio between applications
- qsstv (http://users.telenet.be/on4qz/qsstv/index.html) – to decode SSTV images
- rtl-sdr – a set of Python libraries to control the SDR used
- tweepy (https://www.tweepy.org/) – a Python library for tweeting to Twitter
- discord.py (https://discordpy.readthedocs.io/) – a Python library for accessing the Discord API
- Skyfield (https://rhodesmill.org/skyfield/) – a Python library used to determine where and when it is dark or light
- goestools (https://github.com/pietern/goestools) – GOES demodulation and image creation set of tools
- xrit-rx (https://github.com/sam210723/xrit-rx/) – GK-2A decoder and image creation
- Sanchez (https://github.com/nullpainter/sanchez) – satellite image processor
Installation
This is currently a manual process, with the instructions for installing the Pi and web server code currently being documented in the following spreadsheet: https://github.com/wxcapture/wxcapture/blob/master/WxCapture.xlsx
Technical information:
Please report any technical issues you find with WxCapture by sending an email to contact@kiwiweather.com or submit an issue on Github.