Automated Weather Satellite Ground Station (Mostly Made From Trash)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 21 พ.ค. 2024
- I've just finished a major upgrade to my DIY satellite ground station. This involves a larger (7ft diameter) dish for geostationary GOES-East. I also moved my QFH antenna that receives Polar-Orbiting NOAA and Meteor satellites on VHF frequencies.
This project had some ups and downs, as do most of my builds! I'm using as much second-hand and free equipment as possible to keep costs low. The big dish was a former C-Band television antenna that I found on Craigslist, someone wanted it out of their yard. The L-band feed for GOES is an old coffee can or "cantenna", similar to what you'd use for long-range Wifi. The QFH antenna is one I built from plumbing parts a while ago, in this video: • Automated Home Weather...
You can also see some of the other antennas in prior videos, such as my rectangular TV dish: • Free TV With An Old Sa... and my folded-dipole UHF antenna: • Installing Big Surplus...
Some of the software I'm using for this project includes:
- Goestools (github.com/pietern/goestools)
- Satdump (www.satdump.org/download/)
- SDR++ (www.sdrpp.org/)
- Raspberry-NOAA V2 (github.com/jekhokie/raspberry...)
- Vitality-GOES (github.com/JVital2013/vitalit...)
I found Carl Reinemann's how-to guide for Goestools very helpful:
- usradioguy.com/programming-a-...
NOTES: I used a TV coax cable instead of a USB extension cable described in the above guide. I'm also not using syncthing as described in this guide, and I had to make one other change to the Autostart section. In rc.local I added "sleep 10" (without quotes) just above the two calls to goesrecv and goesproc.
Also thanks to @dereksgc and some of his associates for suggestions along the way!
Some of the hardware that I actually purchased includes:
- RTL-SDR (amzn.to/44GnpMY)
- SAWbird+NOAA (amzn.to/3wEmGiL)
- SAWbird+GOES (amzn.to/4agArSB)
- Raspberry Pi 4 B (amzn.to/4akSl6w) (You'll need two if doing both types of receiver!)
- External Bias Tee (amzn.to/44Garyy) (optional)
(Buying from these links give me a little cut without charging you more, they're a great way to help out my channel!).
Saveitforparts t-shirts and other merch at saveitforparts.myspreadshop.com/
Join this channel to get access to perks:
/ @saveitforparts
Or support me via Patreon at / saveitforparts
Check out gadgets and devices I like at www.amazon.com/shop/saveitfor... - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
waiting on the quantum computer and nuclear reactor (made from trash) episode !
😂😂😂😂😂
😂😂
I keep meaning to make a radiation detector out of cold packs and alcohol, that's been on the list forever!
@@saveitforparts i think a cloud chamber would rock. Get some radioactive material from the trinity site and stick that in there with your cold war stuff!
@@thebroshow6688>>> I actually thought of _Cloud Chamber_ as well.
"It's a nice rainy day today" he said with a smile on his face.
You are such a breath of fresh air man. Your positive energy draws me to your videos as much if not more than the cool stuff you're doing.
With how dry the last few years have been around here, any rain is a welcome sight!
@@ryanfrogz here it's the other way around, days and days of rain and thunder. The slugs have taken over the country!
So true 💯
Couldn´t agree more! He is such a nice guy!
Your audio when you were on the house roof was great.
I am sure I have said it before but it bears repeating, I appreciate the fact you show the learning process. So many times I will watch a video and it will make something look easy and then I try and there are 15 things the video doesn't talk about that could go wrong or that you need to know before you can get something to work. Your videos show the reality of trial and error and the real frustrations of doing something that hasn't been done before or in a new way.
I probably still don't show ALL the errors, that would make for a 2hr video! I do try to cover major problems along the way though!
I agree. We get to see, not all goes to plan, but success can be achieved, with some effort. Something that we don't usually get to see, and then wonder why we (ourselves) can't get the same results. Because the realities have been edited out, our expectations become unrealistic, only guaranteeing disappointments, and frustrations. Your candid examples, are great!
Cheers.
👍
Hahaha the breakdown of that instruction card thing had me absolutely rolling.
I concur.
@@dougtaylor7724 "Indeed."
Every video it’s like Oh shit, what’s next?
7-zip is a great piece of software. The images off the satellites looks awesome, love the animations from those.
Polarity, polarity, a polarising problem!
I can only imagine how with the mix of linear and circular polarised signals in your part of the world how often it gets overlooked or confused.
Looking forward to seeing you eventually get stuck into experimenting with custom & modified waveguides, dielectrics, and all that fun shit. 😸
Thanks for the interesting content mate!
As a satcom guy for my job, I agree with the satcom includes luck, though, I'd say it's 60% luck and 40% math. Great video!
As a professional RF engineer Ive got to say:
WELL DONE!
Fantastic video - a little radio, a little linux, a wild ansible appearance, a mouse, and roofing education! 😅
Thanks!
Hahahaha holy shit, those wheelie stairs on top of your car. Outstanding! I haven’t laughed out loud so hard at a TH-cam video in a long time. Man, just getting it done. 10/10.
He's gonna get hop-ons for sure...
Those SDR modules were designed to receive satellite TV signals and were shipped with a 75 ohm European PAL connector.
50 ohm is used for power matching for transmitters or transceivers, 75 and 93 Ohm coax has lower losses so they are used for receivers and video cabling.
The old C-band equipment used very expensive and large 50 ohm coax at 3.9 to 4.2 GHz. Thad fed 50 Ohm power dividers to feed the RF to multiple receivers in a CATV head end.
If you use a C or kU band down converter, you connect it with 75 Ohm coax. RG6 or better coax was specified for this, because it has a lower capacitance per foot.
RG62, 93 Ohm coax was used for AM car radios, since they were a voltage probe, rather than a traditional antenna. This was coupled to a parallel tuned circuit in the radio to maximize gain. This is why those radios had a trimmer capacitor that was used to maximize reception at the top end of the AM band.
If you really want to set the feed properly on that dish, you need a signal source that you can aim the dish at. Then you adjust the focal length for maximum signal. A standard florescent lamp generates RF welll past 4GHz. I would wave a LNA or LNB across one at my bench to see if it had any gain before fuly testing and repairing them. A lot of them had a bad 78L05 or 7805 Voltage regulator so they were easy to repair.
How did you determine the diameter for the feed horn? It is basically used a a short section of waveguide.
www.everythingrf.com/tech-resources/waveguides-sizes shows yoy the proper dimensions for each range:
There are C-band WR-137 waveguide flange to "N" adapters that might work OK, I made mine from some damaged LNAs, but here is a commercial unit to see how they are built. I measure the length of the probe, then soldered it to the N connector before I bolted it to the casting. I used them to repair C-band RF modules for several years. I would pay $2 for dead modules, but most were easy to repair. I converted a crap RL Drake tunable down converter to a C-band signal generator. I fed it video, coupled into the tuning voltage to modulate it. I now have an extremely rare Microdyne C-band test set for this. It was built for production testing and may be the only one surviving.
www.fairviewmicrowave.com/wr137-type-n-female-waveguide-coax-adapter-cmr-137-fmwca1049-p.aspx?gad_source=1
We had an HF/VHF antenna lab on the roof of the old Cincinnati Electronics building where they tested designs for military radios. We also had a 100 foot shipboard RADAR dish leaning up against the building that had been used to test military RADAR equipment when it was a Crosley, then an AVCO defense plant. I did QA testing on the PRC77 Manpack VHF radios when I worked there.
I joked that if I could get it home to use it for satellite TV that it was bigger than my house but I wouldn't need a LNA because of its gain at 4GHz.
That's cool! You've got a lot more experience with this than I do, I just poke around with old junk until it works. I tend to use the GOES satellite as my fixed source, although the way this antenna is mounted makes it hard to reach the feed without swinging it back over the roof. The cantenna is left over from one of my earlier experiments with GOES, I followed some calculation guides online for a 1.7ghz waveguide and feed. Similar to the old 2.4ghz Pringles cans for WiFi, just larger. There are probably better and more efficient feeds I could make, I might play with it more in the future or try to upgrade to GRB reception with a circular feed. Lots of stuff on the to-do list :-)
@@saveitforparts I worked in TV Broadcast, CATV and manufacturing of Military and Telemetry equipment.
I started out workroom with salvaged parts before I was 10. At 13 I went to work in a TV shop after school, so I started buying some tools, and new parts so I spent less time on each project. One of the links I provided shows diameter/frequency for circular waveguide, along with their cutoff frequencies.
You can mount more than one feed horn on a dish, for different bands. The offset may require a slight re aiming of the dish and will cause a very slight loss in gain. Back in my CATV days there was the Simulsat dish that could hold around a dozen feed horns and didn't require it to be re aimed This let a system receive every C-band satellite they needed with that single dish.
Actually the rtlsdr blog branded sdrs have a 50 Ohm connector on it.
@@kd9kck376 What connector?
@@michaelterrell All RTLSDR Blog branded ones use normal SMA connector.
13:50 if it was previously at ground level then it's likely a rock-hole from a lawnmower/weed eater. My grandfolks had one for Satellite TV from the 90's and, once proper cable was available, they abandoned it. the lower edge was chewed to hell before too many years from rocks kicked up while mowing.
This one was up on a pole above someone's back yard, I got it for free in exchange for taking it down. It didn't seem like the type of neighborhood for stray bullets, but could have been a kid with a slingshot or pellet gun!
Rain, what rain? It's liquid sunshine! 😆
Great idea using the plastic pallets. However, the pallets will be pressing the stones through the tar. My suggestion, sweep away the gravel, to place large concrete paver (smooth side down), to support the pallets at the corners, allowing the pressure/weight to be supported on large and flat footprints, of the pavers. That should prevent, any penetration of the tar (IMO)
Another great presentation, where perseverance wins! Awesome and inspiring! And the pictures (satellite) are great! 😍
"Despite my best efforts my property values keep going up." 😆Keep up the good fight. (:
It really does add to the appeal for your property. I'd like something like that on my roof too
11:57 "Yeah this is grate!" I love you, man.
The Sea of red error message looked beautiful
RF is at least 30% black magic.
And I say that as someone who worked with RF for over 40 years...
That's what I've gotten from it, even working with Wifi was always some % tech and some % magic.
@ 1:30 you should label that big jar......."NOT BOOZE" to protect the lil neighborhood urchins.
Thanks for another great upload. Those pics that came in look great!! 😎👍
A TV with local channel reception is good to have as another information source during emergencies. I have a TV that is primarily used with a streaming box, but it is hooked up to an antenna and I run a channel rescan every couple months.
“60% math and 40% luck” is an accurate description of pleasing the RF gods
Put cat litter in a sock, instead of the dehumidifier, change it once in a while, it will remove some of the moist from the air.
Nice video, love your approach, I do things the same way, a lot of trial and error 😊
you are so happy all the time, you are so positive all the time, youre great!
Standoffs made from hot glue and wire nuts! Love it!
Your humor and the fun you have is so contagious!!
I just love your projects!!
Hey man, I love your channel. I would honestly prefer the trial and error that you film as opposed to a step by step because it feels like we are working on this project with you haha. Honestly your videos are always awesome and you have gotten me to want to get into HAM Radio and AM SAT. Also if you want something to dehumidify the inside of the electronics box but not need power, you can try silica beads. Not exactly sure whether they can suck up a LOT of moisture but it could be better than nothing. Only thing would be replacing them every now and then.
Adding the plastic pallets to the roof is a good idea, it will extend the life of your roof membrane. You might consider adding a ground strap or an ESD static dissipating matt to the pallets.
Love the antenna farm and I'm glad to see the old C-band dish go up. The audio on the roof sounded great to me. Can't wait to see more
Great Video.. So much Deja Vue for me, my first house back in the Mid 80's had a flat roof on an extension that as a newly minted Ham Radio op I immediately saw as potential for antennas. Hauling that C band dish up reminded me of the day I decided to stick a scaffolding pole to brackets on the back of my house over the flat roof and then put up a stack array of 2 meter Yagi antenna, it was a lot of danger and no small amount of muscle and shear will power that saw success rather than any plan or attention to safety.
Good luck and please continue to produce the content you do for as long as you can.
I like how you do things just like I do: reuse old parts and buy the fewer possible lol
Attach bolts screws through the base of the pole so the cement can grab onto the pole better Eric.
I did put some in, not sure if I showed that!
@@saveitforparts I’m wondering how you could ground the plastic pallets. Probably not
Possible.
Yeah, maybe rubber over the top, or hardware cloth and then ground that? I'm not sure either!
Some thoughts:
As to dehumidifying the electronics enclosure, check it is as dry as possible to begin with and a big Silica Gel pack inside and regular inspection and it should be keeping it decently dry. Remember how to "recharge" Silica Gel packs (oven just over 100°C (212°F), let dry out for a couple of hours), if you can get packs with indicator color, it's a plus.
As to antenna cable, check out fatter 50 Ω cable, similar or thicker than the TV antenna cable (check manufacturers data sheets for losses at frequencies of interest). You will need coax connector adapters.
Clamp-on ferrites if you suspect interference fed through the USB power lines.
The wireless mic. actually sounded ok. It was picking up the traffic noise, but you were clear.
Now you've got it (the dish) working, it's very impressive.
Well done!
you have no idea how excited to see someone else having the same issues with the noaav2 that I have. I made the mistake of upgrading to bookworkm and boy did that break a ton of things.
Every EE I've ever met who worked with E&M guys said that E&M is black magic and antenna guys are wizards
If you got some old heat sinks flying around, i am sure you got some in your collection xD, just glue (thermal adhesive recommended) some small one on the Raspberry Pi chip (silver in the center) to increase lifetime. Especially the rpi 4 tends to overheat. If you got a small 5v fan you can just connect to the 2 power pins and make it even better.
You did a nice job! And I love the c band dish too. I have a dish 500 and 2 directv satellites for free tv
You can power the RPi over the GPIO 5v header pins and a few other points without having a wobbly USB cable attached. There are a few points you can solder to for a permanent wire that wont jank.
75 ohm cable is supposed to be used for TV, but it works just fine for AM, SW and FM and UHF frequencies higher than TV.
I really enjoy these videos about satellites. This is the best weather to work on the antenna-anyone can do it in the sunshine. I run a Raspberry Pi 5 with the adapter board and a 1 TB SSD M.2 2280 PCIe NVMe. The Raspberry Pi 5 also boots from the SSD, which makes it very fast and provides plenty of space for many pictures. Updates are installed very quickly. I have Cura running on the Raspberry Pi 5 and use it to slice my 3D objects, which works super fast. I am always very happy when I see the joy and enthusiasm you bring to the projects, and now the antenna mast is supporting the house. Now the storm can come; the house is safe. 👍
The amount of energy you have is frightening.
Ha, I feel like I never have enough to finish all the projects I start 😂
11:46 Dude you absolutely crack me up !!! that is awesome. Love the can do spirit ! Always wondered if the factory roof racks could actually hold anything.
I have carried so much dumb stuff on those roof racks... I'm not actually sure if they're OEM or not, I think I just got cheap ones from Amazon. The car is all scratched up, but I don't care what it looks like as long as it's useful.
Nice satellite dish.
I used to have a dish farm
I had a 10 foot Horizon to Horizon dish that gave me most of Europe and all of America
This is so cool and inspiring!
I'm with you on getting a good signal from Goes. The problem I have is that my dish is only 3ft. I used cardboard and foil tape to make it 42" and just barely got a partial image at one point. My best SNR was about 6dBi. I've made lots of feedhorns and the top 2 designs were a dipole with a 6"x8" curved reflector and the other was a 3 element yagi. I swear I could get a great signal with a 7ft dish.......ugh.
Keep up the videos, you are my only inspiration to get Goes to work for me.
Hopefully you can find a bigger dish around! I've heard 3ft is about the minimum size you need, if everything else is perfect (feed, alignment, etc).
Love the huge dish, that's so awesome
Great Video as usual , I like the way you do things I basically do the same. I will suggest you add a HEAT Sink to the Raspberry PI It will help a lot with keeping it cooler. Keep it up , thanks.
Thank you Sir. Truly enjoy your videos
I would just about give you free rent on a house and shop I have just to watch you for entertainment.
Every new video I think to myselfWhat is that young man up to now?
Your wife must be the most easy going person in the world. Mine would run my ass off if I did this stuff. Keep it coming!
I want a compilation of all the "what? why?!" of that week long debugging
So much room for activities!
Great content, funny, informative, and high quality!!
Yeah, your wireless lavalier mic sounds great 👍
“The neighbors love it and it’s increased my property value!!”
11:08 this feels like the start of a flex seal commercial
Get a POE hat for the pi or a POE to USB adaptor. Then just one network cable up to the roof for power and data. Hopefully I can start on some of my satellite and lora projects too.
I just bought one of those, haven't tried one before.
@@saveitforparts POE opens up a lot of options. There are the cheapies that grab unused pairs in the network cables or ones that are actually the 802.11 whatever (af?) that gives it some smarts. If it's real POE you are only limited by the wattage of the port. For example you can use a power injector on the ground up to a POE powered switch on the roof. It will supply power to the PI hat and you can get a poe to usb adaptor to power the LNA. Honestly if you put the PI's in cases with fans or a passive heatsink case you can probably get away with not needing the dehumidifier. Toss a desiccant pack or two in there. What I usually do for similar outdoor equipment. This will get any AC power out of the box on the roof and away from your antennas. Even if you don't go POE I would consider using a 12 volt DC power supply on the ground and convert it to whatever is needed on the roof using ali buck/boost converters. Don't be afraid of putting ferrites and stuff on the cables as well to knock down noise
I really need to build a better antenna, the idea to get satelite images yourself is so intriguing.
very cool stuff man
Try getting a metal project box to mount the Pi in. You're correct about the RF interference. It can make some seriously unwanted effects on your signal.
4:20 oh my god he said the line
Later this summer if you find you're having overheating issues, build a tornado box around that case where every side has a 1in vertical slot running the height of the box on the far left of each side to circulate air. Be aware the wasps are gonna love it though.
That is really cool! I love your videos!
happy to see that big dish finally being used ^~^
Me too, except now I need to find a home for the grey dish that's even larger!
love your videos
I've got to do a GOES setup at some point, love all the detailed imagery and meteorological info. This setup of yours is looking very nice!
'''TAXES''' hahaha loved the instructions
Man I'm jealous! That's the setup I been trying to accomplish, along with airplane tracking. Congrats Dude!
you can get vents for enclosures like that with a one-way water permeable membrane that fit in a knockout plug; they're more expensive than free but worth it. I've got a GORE PMF100321 on the waterproof enclosure that holds the ESP32, battery, and solar charge controller for my weather station and it's never had issues with condensation forming on the clear bottom lid despite the relatively high average humidity here, and large temperature swings.
THIS IS SO COOL!
I like watching your projects and you've helped me in some of mine without knowing it.
15:51 It's good to know your antenna mast is well grounded! That's a plus right?
You local tv channel weather folks can come to you if their stuff ever goes (no pun intended) down. This is very awesome!
11:52 So much space for activities 😃
To prevent static electric charge from the plastic pallets you could put rubber mats on top or them to prevent that from happening, 😁😁😁😁
LOLOL! Another great video! All the talk about raspberry pi made me run down to Kwik Trip and get pie & ice cream! Keep up the good work!
Great video🤙🏼
You have something like 30dB of gain ahead of your coax cable. It *IS* lossy, but with plenty of gain ahead of it, that loss won't matter much. The SNR of your system, when there's an LNA "up front' is almost completely defined by the characteristics of the LNA--it's noise figure, and gain. See "Friis: Noise Chain Analysis". The loss of the cable between the LNA output and your RTL-SDR receiver won't matter until it's getting close to the same magnitude as the gain on your LNA. 10-15m of RG6 at GOES frequencies will be just fine. After all, they use RG6 in satellite TV systems as well, and they work just fine.
Love the content! Keep it up!
"I still don't fully trust the wireless mic" says the guy plucking the faintest of signals out of low earth orbit with junkyard equipment (and a bit of duct tape)! Hahaha, that was a very funny one.
I am absolute garbage at audio. Probably from growing up listening to various CB and marine radios, I don't mind a little static and scratchy voices. But when I make a video I keep reminding myself that other people want GOOD audio 😂
damn thats so cool man
good effort!
You're a neat dude.
You know with those stairs on your car, you're gonna get hop-ons...
Yay “automated”! It’d be so cool if it was like, self contained like a satellite, working for decades with low maintenance. Idk it’s just a cool thing to me.
I'm considering doing a self-contained system at Sandland that's solar powered and uses one of my weird old tablets to display downloaded data.
@@saveitforparts I would be very interested in watching such a video, and a “look back” once a few months / years have passed even.
ideas for upgrading your house for a zombie apocolypse : 1 Barricade windows , 2. Barbed wire, 3. laser IR rip wire, motion sensors, 4. Cameras. 5. Mounted semiauto carbine. 6. weather sats.
Yea, the pallets will work for you. Ideally, when you find enough salvaged wood a nice salvaged wood deck sitting on the pallets along with some deck chairs would be sweet.
Food for thought, use your Nano Vna to check your antenna system for issues.
I've found using my Nano Vna that I used old coax that had water ingress that destroyed it having a 50 ohm characteristc impedance. I also had a mucked up transformer that mucked up things. I think impedance matching is pretty important. When its off enough its like trying to start from a dead stop a car in 5th gear. But, 75 ohm instead of 50 ohm I think would give you if otherwise perfect a 1.5 for reflected power that as I remember is under a 10 % loss. So, not to big of a deal.....
The RMS deviation from a true parabola needs to be less than about 1/10th of a wavelength. Dings and dents in the mesh are much less serious at L-band frequencies than actual bent ribs. That would be nearly-fatal, so to speak.
only thing I would have done differently was to not have the usb power bricks in the box as those usually make alot of rf interference. to fix the power issues, the PI has a +5 and ground pins on the gpio that you can wire the 5v supply to directly. most of the power issues I have run into is just the crappy usb micro b.
I will say you are dedicated.
when you said you wanted to upgrade that raspberry pi and software i immediately thought "no way that'll go smoothly"
Good ol Gimp
Love your videos, have been watching you for a while :)
Audio on the roof was a lot better this time, still could probably lower the gain a bit. Sounds like it is still clipping gently.
RE: your errors with trying to load a new / updated OS. You mentioned power supply issues, I would also consider maybe the SD card didnt do well in the heat of the box. I wouldve tried a new SD. Glad you got it working though!
EDIT: never mind, you replaced it all lol
Also, using a common mode choke on the usb cable solved the interference issues I had
Same, I used the clam shell clip-on ferrite beads and it helped get rid of computer noise. I used the ferrites very near the PC to prevent the noise from entering the USB cable. I'm not sure where the best location is for the ferrite beads. While I was at it, I clamped a bunch of them on AC adapters and other USB cables.
I worked on many satellite programs over the years...for weather if you cant get through NOAA try the DMSP constellation and or GOES as you have shared it tracks more then weather and been around for 50 years... I worked on it for a long time each country has their own version and or sharing information data good luck..always enjoy your videos
I'd like to try DMSP, I've been trying to get into S-Band but haven't had the time for it!
The mike sounds good on the roof.
Awesome work and video! :D
I do the same - try not to buy anything new, and see what I can build from old parts I have.
btw, at 16:53 - that looks like USB noise to me. I've had that problem lots of times too, and one thing you could try is to get a long USB cable to connect the sdr, wrap it around a toroid ferrite core or any ferrite core - more turns better, but too much also might stop helping, so like 3 to 5, maybe 10.
Fantastic results from an old scratchy porno dish! Something to be said for keeping RFI away from the feedhorn.
Hekk yeah!
Working on the roff musst be rough^^ Sorry mate, I love you ;)