Resources

In putting together this site, we have made use of multiple online resources which have assisted in multiple areas from how to build antennae, decode images and troubleshooting.

SDR – Software Defined Radio

• SDR# – Windows software to control an SDR, which includes multiple plugins.
• RTL-SDR v3 User Guide – User guide for the SDRs used in this project.
• RTL-SDR Store – Where to buy RTL-SDR dongles, antennae kit and FM block.
• Nooelec NOAA SAWbird – Nooelec SAWbird+ NOAA – Premium SAW Filter & Cascaded Ultra-Low Noise LNA Module for NOAA Applications. 137MHz Center Frequency

Antennae – design and construction

• QFH antenna design – Design information for building a QFH antenna.
• QFH calculator – Online calculator for designing a QFH antenna optimised for receiving NOAA and Meteor satellites.

NOAA – decoding and processing

• wxtoimg – wxtoimg is the NOAA decoding software used in the project. Ensure you download the beta release for latest version, including the ability to install on Windows 10 (Intel CPU only)
• wxtoimg GUI manual – Manual for the wxtoimg GUI with extensive information on functionality.
• NOAA Satellite Guide – National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration User’s Guide for Building and Operating Environmental Satellite Receiving Stations. Slightly dated in places.
• Interference to APT Satellite Reception – A great guide to identifying sources of noise in NOAA APT images and how to try to resolve them.

Meteor – decoding and processing

• Meteor-M2 series demodulator – Software used to demodulate the recorded pass .wav file.
• Meteor-M2 series decoder – Software used to decode the demodulated pass data
• Meteor software – Software for decoding Meteor plus rectify-jpg which is used to correct the geometry of Meteor images.

Reddit

• /r/RTLSDR – Reddit RTLSDR community
• /r/amateursatellites – Reddit amateur satellites community

Satellite prediction

• Gpredict – Windows and Linux application to track satellites and predict orbits. This includes a command line version used by WxCapture to predict passes for capture

GK-2A

• XRIT-RX – GK-2A decoding software
• goestools – used to decode the images from XRIT-RX, plus the GOES 17 images received from ZL1LAC
• ffmpeg – a great way to animate series of frames into mp4 video files
• pynng – used to connect to the XRIT-RX and goesproc servers to monitor reception

Sanchez

• Sanchez – image projection / stitching software

Twitter

• tweepy – python library which provides access to the Twitter API.

Discord

• discord-webhook – python library to access Discord web hooks

SSTV

• MMSSTV – SSTV decoder which runs on Windows
• Virtual Audio Cable – enables captured ISS captures to be piped to MMSSTV