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Space Toys Science

Build Your Own Satellite Ground Station 179

Posted by michael from the who-needs-the-weather-channel dept.
kavachameleon writes "A site called Hobby Space has this article at which there are instructions on how you can build your own satellite weather station! Something I think all of us have wanted to do at one point or another, this site tells us all how to "hack" into the weather satellites and get back usable pictures using our PCs and an AM antenna. There are more instructions for getting geostationary images."
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Build Your Own Satellite Ground Station

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  • Cabin Fever (Score:5, Funny)

    by The_Rippa ( 181699 ) on Friday March 14, 2003 @06:15PM (#5515322)
    Fantastic! Now even when Weather.com is down I can still see what the weather is like without having to expose by pasty white skin to the elements.

    • Re:Cabin Fever (Score:5, Funny)

      by SuDZ ( 450180 ) on Friday March 14, 2003 @06:19PM (#5515365)
      Carefull, it's dangerous out there. You know, past the front door.

      SuDZ

    • Re:Cabin Fever (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonvmous Coward ( 589068 ) on Friday March 14, 2003 @08:12PM (#5516217)
      "Fantastic! Now even when Weather.com is down I can still see what the weather is like without having to expose by pasty white skin to the elements."

      Oh geez, don't you guys study history? There are several ancient civilizations that had very simple devices for determining the weather without actually having to go outside. All you need is a piece of glass, a rock, a hole in a wall (preferably leading to the exterior of your house), and a piece of glass to fill that hole and prevent everything but light from getting in.

      Hang the rock outside of this piece of glass using a string so that it's visible by peering through the hole. Installation's complete!

      That rock provides all kinds of scientific data you can use:

      - If the rock is bright, it's day.
      - If the rock is dark, it's night.
      - If the rock is wet, it's raining.
      - If the rock is white, it's snowing.
      - If the rock is shaking, there's an earthquake.
      - If the rock is swinging, it's windy outside.
      - If the rock is swinging and wet, it's a hurricane.
      - If the rock is gone, don't open the door.

      Pff who needs fancy schmancy satellites?
      • "There are several ancient civilizations that had very simple devices for determining the weather without actually having to go outside."

        Yeah, they were called "slaves".

        Came in handy for all sorts of unpleasant things you didn't want to deal with yourself.

        'Course if you were the slave your appreciation of the system was probably somewhat lacking.

        • "Yeah, they were called "slaves".
          Came in handy for all sorts of unpleasant things you didn't want to deal with yourself.
          'Course if you were the slave your appreciation of the system was probably somewhat lacking."

          Man, you really sucked the fun out of my light hearted comment. I brought that joke back all the way from the Ozarks!
          • Hey, you got modded up twice as "Funny". I'd say you did alright.

            Next time just don't leave any straight lines lying around for me :-) I lack the character to resist them.

  • Hacking Satellites? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Dukeofshadows ( 607689 ) on Friday March 14, 2003 @06:18PM (#5515353) Journal
    Is it really worth hacking a damn weather satellite when you can turn on any news station or hit weather.com or wunderground.com and get global/regional/local conditions?

    On the other hand it would be pretty cool if you could jury-rig a means of watching the Iraq-US battle via satellite or find a way to make a de facto spy satellite out of it...

    • Re:Hacking Satellites? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 14, 2003 @06:31PM (#5515464)
      They aren't hacking satellites. They are just receiving signals... unencoded ones at that.

      The only way 'hack' applies to this article is that it's kind of neat.
      • I guess AM (amp.mod) is a form of encoding, you are thinking of encrypted.
        Then again, AM would be a form of weak encryption for somebody not familiar with the concept... ;-)
      • It's "hacking" satellite receivers.

        Yes, really. It's not cracking anything, though. I find it amusing that the Slashdot crowd assumes that "hacking" means "cracking" even given the popular sport of deriding the mainstream press for confusing the two.
    • No more exciting or boring than buying some off the shelf computer and leaving it in 100% factory spec.

    • Re:Hacking Satellites? (Score:5, Informative)

      by DustMagnet ( 453493 ) on Friday March 14, 2003 @06:50PM (#5515633) Journal
      It's not hacking, since the software and receivers have been available cheaply for years.

      We use it all the time in Antarctica. I'm sure it is useful other places not covered by weather.com. You have to have line of sight on the sat, it has to have line of sight on the weather, so the range is limited, but good enough. The pixel size is huge, so it's no good for spying.

      It does do both IR and visible, so you can get the temp/height of the clouds too.

    • Re:Hacking Satellites? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Xzzy ( 111297 ) <sether@@@tru7h...org> on Friday March 14, 2003 @06:53PM (#5515650) Homepage
      > Is it really worth hacking a damn weather
      > satellite when you can turn on any news station

      no, but it's fun.

      Dorking around with technology is the entire point of being a geek. If you have to question why these people shouldn't have done this, I question your geektitude. ;)

      It's like climbing a mountain.. just do it because it's there.

      • Re:Hacking Satellites? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Tackhead ( 54550 ) on Friday March 14, 2003 @07:19PM (#5515814)
        > Dorking around with technology is the entire point of being a geek. If you have to question why these people shouldn't have done this, I question your geektitude. ;)

        Damn straight!

        My biggest pet peeve with weather newscasts is that they only show, say, eight hours of cloud movement. (You know, it looks like a frickin' animated .GIF. Blip, reset, blip, reset, blip.)

        That's all I need to guess what the weather will be like tomorrow.

        For geekitude, I'd like to have a screen saver looping, say, the last year's cloud movement, so I could watch the tropical storms develop over the Atlantic and Pacific, build in power, and dissipate over the coast, or the forest fires lighting up and spreading smoke until late fall.

        To do that and to say "Oh, my world weather time-lapse screensaver? Antenna glued to my flagpole, little dongle and A/D converter, and a cron job."

        Geekitude to the max.

    • You can already receive sat images off the HF bands if you have the right gear. It's slow but doable.
      • Too true. We were doing this with home made dishes in the mid eighties as a school project.

        We used to get data from the NOAA and Russian (erm Comet? can't remember) satellites. The NOAA ones were good for temperature and things but the Russian ones gave excellent cloud pictures. They also had a much more obvious clock with a real tick-tock to it where as the NOAA ones just went tick tick tick :)

        We had a 1.5m dish made from chickenwire and an LMB made from a coffee jar, all connected to an HF receiver and

    • Re:Hacking Satellites? (Score:5, Funny)

      by GlassHeart ( 579618 ) on Friday March 14, 2003 @07:49PM (#5516036) Journal
      Is it really worth hacking a damn weather satellite when you can turn on any news station or hit weather.com

      This is just version 1, so it's kinda plain. Version 2 will enable writes, so you can modify the weather through the satellite.

    • Like many hacks, the value is in the hack. Any additional utility value is a bonus.

  • Echelon (Score:3, Funny)

    by Jedi Holocron ( 225191 ) on Friday March 14, 2003 @06:19PM (#5515370) Homepage Journal


    Now that you've "hacked" a weather satellite, how long till Ashcroft and Co. deem you an enemy combatant?

    You should have just turned to The Weather Channel on digital cable when the site was unavailable. ;-)

    "I am not a number!" - Number Six, The Prisoner

  • While you're at it... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Valiss ( 463641 ) on Friday March 14, 2003 @06:20PM (#5515372) Homepage
    Along the same lines, a bunch of rich geeks over at SpaceX [spacex.com] are building a rocket to go to space. Who needs NASA when you have a huge chunk o cash? Combine these two projects and you can start your very own space program!

  • Much cooler images... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Rorschach1 ( 174480 ) on Friday March 14, 2003 @06:21PM (#5515376) Homepage
    Are available here [fvalk.com].

    Takes a bit more equipment, though.
  • Guess we don't need that anymore! Now the networks have to search for new catchy phrases (like live doppler 7000) to get our viewership for their late night weather forecast!

  • DMCA? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If it's illegal to create your own equipment for receiving and decoding satellite television transmissions, then is it legal to do the same for weather satellite transmissions? What about other kinds of satellites that may be beaming all sorts of information through our homes?

  • This isn't exactly new.... (Score:5, Informative)

    by markana ( 152984 ) on Friday March 14, 2003 @06:23PM (#5515395)
    I've been reading articles about how to decode these pictures since the 60's - I've got ARRL books and magazines going back at least that far. Hobbyists have been doing this with PCs since the late 70's. The transmissions are basically faxes, so it's pretty easy to decode with a sound card.

    I know there have been some old news stories appearing lately, but really now...
    • I've been reading articles about how to decode these pictures since the 60's - I've got ARRL books and magazines going back at least that far. Hobbyists have been doing this with PCs since the late 70's. The transmissions are basically faxes, so it's pretty easy to decode with a sound card.

      I'll second that. HAMs have been doing this for decades. It's not rocket science. Also, with the easy to find images on the web these days it is at best a way to kill time.
      • So what? It's new to a lot of people. And the fact that you can do it with your PC makes it relevant to Slashdot. Besides, the fact that we can get weather satellite pictures off the net doesn't make this hobby irrelevant. We can make voice calls over standard analog telephone lines, yet people still use IM and such. Props to the guy for the cool project.
    • Yeah, very true! And your not actually "hacking" a weather satellite these weather maps are broadcasted for the public anyways. Iv been decoding NOAA and GOES maps for the last 20 years.... If you wanna hack anything hack the enigma number stations :P
    • I once saw an old article detailing how you could build a circuit to attach to your radio, and then attach it to your oscilloscope to see the image.

      It's called Slow-scan TV, and has been around for ages.
    • Here's one of the first images [hffax.de] done in 1926. Of course, this weather image didn't come from a satellite, but they've been doing this stuff for a long time!

  • Screw that.. (Score:4, Funny)

    by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Friday March 14, 2003 @06:23PM (#5515398) Homepage Journal

    Hacking weather satellites is lame. I want to hack the secret Illuminati Weather Machines and Plate Tectonic Control Grid...

    Damn... where's my tinfoil hat>
    • If you had worn your tinfoil hat in the first place, the orbital mind control lasers wouldn't have been able to erase your knowledge of its location.

      OMCL: We know what's on your mind - we put it there!

  • Among Other Things (Score:5, Funny)

    by Davis Bacon ( 639300 ) on Friday March 14, 2003 @06:24PM (#5515402)
    ...you can build your own satellite weather station! Something I think all of us have wanted to do at one point or another...

    Things I want to do this weekend:

    1) Clean the barbeque grill
    2) Vacuum the living room
    3) Build a weather satellite station

  • any porn of these satelittes? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    otherwise I don't see the point.
  • Even if I build my evil master "weather" satellite station the Department of Homeland Security would not let met launch my evil master "weather" satellite (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) into orbit.

    http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/02/20/131825 9&mode=thread&tid=159 [slashdot.org]

  • OK... (Score:2, Funny)

    by TaranRampersad ( 650261 )
    Now will someone post how I can build my own satellite and get it into orbit? :)

    • Re:OK... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Smallpond ( 221300 ) on Friday March 14, 2003 @06:40PM (#5515538) Homepage Journal
      Here ya go

      www.amsat.org [amsat.org]

    • Well, this doesn't seem like that hard of a task, but there is a lot to do with launch dynamics. I'm an ameture model rocketist myself, so I'll try my best to explain it.

      First, we list our obsticles: that damned atmotsphere we need to live, the gravity that holds us to the ground, weight-to-fuel ratio.
      The atmostphere is no problem really, just build a rocket with a conic head, besides if you can get anything up to the right speed, the shape won't matter (unless it's an inverted cone or a flat surface...

    • Re:OK... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by geekoid ( 135745 )
      ok.
      1)get satalite companent
      2) build satalit
      3)get large rocket
      4)send satalite to space.
      5)Profit!!

  • Other Resources (Score:5, Informative)

    by Noksagt ( 69097 ) on Friday March 14, 2003 @06:27PM (#5515436) Homepage
    Once again slashdot stumbles upon an already popular hobby. http://www.scnt01426.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Articles /WXSAT/wxsat.htm [blueyonder.co.uk]
    • dude, I've never heard of this. I think its terribly nifty and that slashdot posted it doesn't make slashdot lame.

      I was listening to NPR one day. They did a story on Siberian throat singers. Its terribly popular and has been for generations. I'd never heard of it though. Does that make NPR a stumbler?

      post your link, get your karma but keep the bitching in your journal.
    • Once again slashdot stumbles upon an already popular hobby

      Yeah, well there aren't that many articles on the as-yet-undiscovered hobbies around, are there? Smartass.

  • What good is this?? (Score:3, Funny)

    by 4/3PI*R^3 ( 102276 ) on Friday March 14, 2003 @06:29PM (#5515443)
    Even if I did build my evil master "weather" satellite station, the Dept. of Homeland Security would prevent me from launching my evil master "weather" satellite.

    http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/02/20/131825 9&mode=thread&tid=159 [slashdot.org]
    • I agree with the moderation here. Of the two nearly identical posts, this one had one fewer ?. I think we can all agree that two ?'s is better than three ?'s. Although, the (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) of the other post is attractive.
      • Aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh

        My plan of subtle diversion and subterfuge has been detected. Come Pinky we must prepare for tommorow


        What are we doing tomorrow, Brain?


        The same thing we do every day Pinky, try to take over the world.

  • OTOH (Score:2, Informative)

    by OECD ( 639690 )

    You could just go to NOAA's Geostationary Satellite Server page [noaa.gov] and D/L the damn things.

    I guess I have to turn in my geek card now...

  • When you can check the weather by going outside http://www.ramseyelectronics.com/cgi-bin/commerce. exe?preadd=action&key=ws5000 [ramseyelectronics.com]
  • Is there a command line tool for grabbing weather data? I'd like to do some MRTG graphs of internal temp sensors vs. external temperatures. Unfortunately I don't have a way to get "outside" at the facilities I want outside temps for. If there was some "wxfetch --temp --site=sna" command that would give me easily parsable basic weather data (no pix, all text) it'd rock.

    • Re:OT: Command line tool for grabbing WX data? (Score:5, Informative)

      by PatJensen ( 170806 ) on Friday March 14, 2003 @06:52PM (#5515642) Homepage
      Buy an Oregon Scientific or compatible weather station, wired or wireless for around $200. Then get wx200d (http://wx200d.sourceforge.net) and install it. It has a plotting engine as well as a live client->server engine for using graphical clients to display live data.

      I ported the wx200d communication code to BSD a year ago. Good software!

      Pat

      • Not an option at all. I cannot get outside at the 45 story highrise downtown building our offices are in. We are tenants of about 6 floors, there is no "outside" that belongs to us or we have access too.

        The same is true in the other sites I manage; tenants of large, otherwise sealed buildings.

        I'd love to do what you suggest, but it is simply not an option. I'd be just thrilled with the nearest airport temperature data.
        • You know, the government ought to collect and disseminate the temperature data that the National Weather Service collects in a computer parseable format via anonymous ftp.

          Oh wait, they do [noaa.gov]. They even provide you with loads of docs that will tell you more than you ever wanted to know about the format of government weather data.
  • Learn how to build your own International Space Station (ISS) !
  • For those that think that Amateur radio uses
    acient technology, look into the great space
    stuff hams are doing..

    Two way satellite contacts, contacts with the
    space station, hand-held data transmission
    via satellite.. pretty neat stuff..

    check out AMSAT [amsat.org] and the ISS [nasa.gov] radio page.
  • this has been done 30 years or so now.
  • One could always set up a NOAAPORT system and download images and data.
    http://205.156.54.206/noaaport/html/noaaport.shtml [205.156.54.206]

  • Seen similar (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Upright Joe ( 658035 ) <<moc.liamg> <ta> <eojthgirpu>> on Friday March 14, 2003 @06:49PM (#5515621) Homepage
    My high school physics teacher had something very similar to this in the classroom in 1993. I think he said the software and antenna cost him $175 if I remember correctly. There may have been an educational discount involved though I suppose.

    The software he had was really slick it would even display IR data from some satelites over a photo so as you drug the mouse around, you could see the temperature of the pixel you were pointing to.

    Just like in the example given in the article, there were times in which there were no satellites overhead to connect to, but I remember there being a large selection of sattelites that it would listen to including a bunch of foreign weather satelites.

    I wish I had more specifics but that's all I can remember right now.

  • Been doing it for years (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Ham radio operators have been doing it for years. I'm sure there are quite a few short wave listeners (SWL) that have been doing it also. All you need is a couple of caps, resistors and the like to build the interface between the radio and the computer.
    I'm sure it's gotten even easier now with the advent of the cheap sound card and processors. Most of the digital modes via ham radio can be done with a sound card.
  • Technically it's not hacking since the weather satellites are constantly transmitting the images and you are just receiving it and processing them.

  • Antic and STart magazine (Score:5, Interesting)

    by digitalhermit ( 113459 ) on Friday March 14, 2003 @06:59PM (#5515693) Homepage
    Years ago there was an article in the Atari magazines _Antic_ and _STart_ (for 8-bit and STs respectively) that detailed how to make a WEFAX (weather facsimile) device for pulling weather images off a shortwave radio. I was able to built it but never had a shortwave radio so the thing just sat there. You could supposedly purchase cassette tapes of the signal, but that seemed vaguely ridiculous.

    But using computers to do other things besides email and web browsing has always fascinated me. I'm now trying to get the GRASS system working so that I can create maps of my area. No luck so far, but success is imminent (I hope). If anyone knows of other projects that allow computers (running Linux in particular) to map the world, chart the weather, decode satellite images, etc., please let me know.
  • without the country and state borders superimposed you can't tell what the heck is going on.

    Dan East

  • oh, the irony. (Score:5, Funny)

    by mshultz ( 632780 ) on Friday March 14, 2003 @07:05PM (#5515732)

    From the article....

    Combined with the bad weather of winter and the short days, the images from home were dark and short...

    This is great- it doesn't work if the weather's rotten! how useful for a weather-watching satellite receiver....

  • ...and suddenly the price of Icom PCR1000 radio's on ebay skyrockets...

    just like the powerbook 280c after that picture frame article [slashdot.org]! =)

  • Interesting, but... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Chromal ( 56550 )
    This is mostly interesting because of it's unusual way of decoding digitally transmitted satellite data. The idea of using a sound card and a short wave receiver to decode satellite imagery is... quaint.

    But why play around with that when you tap into the freely-accessible C-band T-1 National Weather Service downlink, NOAAPORT [205.156.54.206] and get all the international surface obs data, text products, rawinsonde (weather balloons), Nexrad doppler radar, and supercomputing forecast model data for free?

    Well, okay, this a

  • I'm in! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Ratbert42 ( 452340 ) on Friday March 14, 2003 @07:20PM (#5515816)
    ...this site tells us all how to "hack" into the weather satellites and get back usable pictures using our PCs and an AM antenna.

    Cool. This site [tvguide.com] tells us all how to "hack" into the TV stations and get back usable video using our televisions and a broad-band antenna.

  • The Remote Imaging Group [rig.org.uk] is the place to go for information on all aspects of this hobby.
  • surely theres a technical reason, but i'm still curious. whats preventing me from getting any old radio (like my typical home stereo reciever), tuning to AM frequency 137.50mhz or whatever it was, and just doing line out to the soundcard so that little proggy can do its work? i imagine i'd need a big honkin antennae, but is there something different about these special recievers that they do differently than any other AM reciever?
    • 137MHz...that's a bit above the 1.7MHz where the AM broadcast band ends, and the 108MHz where the FM broadcast band ends...though comsumer radios that receive the "aircraft" band can receive the frequency. Next problem is tapping the IF (the result of mixing signal from a local oscillator to heterodyne with the incoming signal to covert it to a lower frequency (makes sum & difference frequencies, all but difference filtered out)

      • I'm pretty sure that 137MHz is right there in the cable tv "cable channels" band, so maybe you could hack the tuner from a TV or VCR and the FM detector in its audio section. Lot better chance of finding schematics for one of those than for a motherboard. :-(
        • it's right between cable channels 16 and 17 (in U.S.A.)....actually, it'll be a part of what channel 16 includes, as there's 4.5MHz upper sideband of video that it will pass.

          neat chart including broadcast and standard cable base frequencies here [jneuhaus.com]

    • surely theres a technical reason, but i'm still curious. whats preventing me from getting any old radio (like my typical home stereo reciever), tuning to AM frequency 137.50mhz or whatever it was, and just doing line out to the soundcard so that little proggy can do its work? i imagine i'd need a big honkin antennae, but is there something different about these special recievers that they do differently than any other AM reciever?

      First of all, no typical AM receiver will tune this high. 137mHz is just a

  • Nice try (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by pvera ( 250260 )
    Any
  • For those wondering, Satellite Comm techs in the USArmy fall under MOS 31S (it used to be 29Y but it was changed when I was still in the service).

    I got to see a few hacks like that when I was in the service. The main problem was that the equipment used to downconvert the RF was too godawful expensive! A 19" rack with just a down converter, a patch panel, a HP spectrum analyzer and a custom DEC drawer was over $300K.

    Later we found out there was a card you could plug into a normal retail PC that allowed us
  • The first setup used a geared motor driving a drum (made from a rolling ping) that had tinfoil wrppaed around, with electrostatic fax paper on top of that. It would print the image via a motor driven needle that put a high voltage current to the paper when it recieved a black portion of the image. Omni-directional antenna and a modified scanner completed the rig.

    I wish I still had my copy of "The Weather Satellite Handbook".

    73 de VE6LSH

  • HamFax (Score:2, Informative)

    by pa-guy ( 457151 )
    You can use HamFax to do this under linux. Predict will tell you when the bird will be visible.

    http://hamfax.sourceforge.net/
    http://www.qsl.n et/kd2bd/predict.html

    73 de VE6LSH
  • Just thought I'd mention it :)

  • You don't need this complicated a setup.... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Newer Guy ( 520108 ) on Friday March 14, 2003 @09:06PM (#5516518)
    Many of you already have what it takes to receive these satellites. Many police scanners such as the Realistic 2006 have an FM wideband mode that works just fine. Take the audio (data) out of the headphone jack. Simply try tuning your scanner into the frequencies in the article and set the scanner for wideband FM. Leave it for a while with the squelch just barely set and it's very likely that as the satellite comes over your horizon, you'll hear the 'tick tick' he speaks of. Usually a lower gain scanner antenna is best (Radio Shack sells a discone for about 60 bucks) because higher gain antennas compress the vertical lobe to get more gain on the horizon (and for space reception you WANT tha antenna to "look up" into the sky.

  • It's not hacking...it's called "radio" (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Call Me Black Cloud ( 616282 ) on Friday March 14, 2003 @10:18PM (#5516843)
    For those that don't want to worry about when the satellite is passing overhead and happen to live in the US (or thereabouts), consider EMWIN [noaa.gov], the Emergency Managers' Weather Information Network. You can receive data by satellite, radio, or Internet. NOAA has links to schematics, free software (with source) and other good information.
  • What the heck is an AM antenna?

    I believe these are the same antenna's a lot of use for downconverting AO40's 2.4 ghz s2 transponder - which is a passband transponder - usually USB.

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