Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by janrinok on Sunday July 26 2015, @08:49PM   Printer-friendly
from the it's-going-to-rain-or-go-dark-before-tomorrow dept.

Here is a rather cool demonstration of receiving weather satellite images with a low cost USB dongle.

There are several American NOAA weather satellites in a polar orbit around Earth, each of which will pass the same point below every 12 hours or so. The satellites transmit pictures via FM radio at 137MHz. Using a DAB/FM/Freeview dongle, you can receive this signal on a computer running software-defined radio (SDR) software, and then decode it into a picture.

The receiver in this case is a Nooelec R820T USB Dongle, and several other neat SDR applications are also possible with this hardware.

Originally spotted on Lobsters


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 4, Informative) by pyg on Monday July 27 2015, @12:41AM

    by pyg (4381) on Monday July 27 2015, @12:41AM (#214035)

    For amateur radio on a budget these little dongles are the most bang for buck out there above even Chinese made HTs. Another $5 gets you an smx to so239 or sma adapter as the given antenna is useless. The model he's talking about will tune 22 -1766 MHz so 12 meters through most of the cell phone bands. My radios (above mentiond HTs) don't have things like Close Call feature so I use the dongle to spot local 2 meter for interesting LMR/EMS stuff. I live super rural so not much to hear unless you know where to listen. Interestingly I recently picked up someone working on a cell tower nearby on a GMRS freq. with lots of profanity and only half the conversation as his ground crew wasn't propagating at all.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +3  
       Informative=3, Total=3
    Extra 'Informative' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   4