rtlsdr-automated-wxsat-capture

Automate Recording of Low Earth Orbit NOAA Weather Satellites

These are some automation scripts I am developing in python for weather satellite hobbyist use.

License: GPLv2 or any later version

assumptions: Linux-based computer, rtl-sdr usb dongle, stationary antenna, experienced python user

goal: record wav files for later processing

prerequistes: working rtl-sdr, predict (text based, not gpredict) setup with correct ground station coordinates, sox

NO WARRANTY: ALL USE IS AT THE RISK OF THE USER. These are scripts I use for hobbyist purposes. There may be pre-requisites or system configuration differences which you will need to resolve in order to make use of these scripts in your project. To do so requires patience and and, quite often, previous experience programming python and/or maintaining Linux-based rtl-sdr software.

##FILES

###LICENSE General Public License version 2.0, or any later version

###dotpredict-predict.tle Modification of PREDICT's TLE file to provide orbit data for weather satellites NOAA-18,NOAA-19 to get coverage of missing satellites into predict's default config

Copy as follows:

mv dotpredict-predict.tle ~/.predict/predict.tle

###noaacapture.py This is the main python script. It will calculate the time of the next pass for recording. It expects to call rtl_fm to do the recording and sox to convert the file to .wav

###pypredict.py This is a short python module for extracting the AOS/LOS times of the next pass for a specified satellite. It calls predict -p and extracts the times from the first and last lines.

###update-keps.sh This is a short shell script to update the keps, which are orbital parameters needed by the predict program. It is mostly copied from the PREDICT man page. PREDICT was written by John Magliacane, KD2BD and released under the GPL license.