How to download satellite pictures of earth for under 50$

[sitha241]

Hello!
Me and my friend built rig to get pictures from NOAA satelites..
If you have some spare money and time you can do it too

Here are example of pictures

https://www.dropbox.com/home/Public/NOAA 18 01

and youtube tutorial my friend made on how to do it...
Enjoy!

 

[kamaz]

Amazing!

RTL-SDR is the killer

 

[statickid]

thats incredible! well done!

---------- Post added at 02:09 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:55 PM ----------

sort of off-topic, your post got me interested in the NOAA satellites, and I found this image of NOAA 19, which got dropped while testing. I'll bet somebody lost their job here.

 

[Quick_Nick]

I'm just surprised this isn't coming from Artlav.

 

[sitha241]

thats incredible! well done!

---------- Post added at 02:09 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:55 PM ----------

sort of off-topic, your post got me interested in the NOAA satellites, and I found this image of NOAA 19, which got dropped while testing. I'll bet somebody lost their job here.

Yeah my friend sent me that..I could not belive that happened... :facepalm:

 

[sitha241]

Little update of project..now everything is in one box and 2 preamps are inside.. :thumbup:

 

[4throck]

As long as you can control your PC tuner to get the right frequency, it's actually quite simple. In theory you can also receive communications from the ISS, for example.

But you will really need to have an antenna and point it at the right direction.

 

[sitha241]

As long as you can control your PC tuner to get the right frequency, it's actually quite simple. In theory you can also receive communications from the ISS, for example.

But you will really need to have an antenna and point it at the right direction.

We did listen soyuz crew while docking with ISS few months ago!
We have antenna and it does not need to be pointed in right direction


:tiphat:

 

[Urwumpe]

Yeah, for most communication channels, a helix antenna is perfectly fine... this one is approximately L-Band, right?

But in the modern times, you can also build yourself a gyrostabilized parabolic antenna by COTS parts... I would say, costs for the project about 350 €, if you use an expensive controller board. While a 8-bit Arduino would be enough, a 32 bit controller makes the programming easier. The fitting driver board for two motors is also COTS today, no need for soldering, unless you like it...

 

[sitha241]

Yeah, for most communication channels, a helix antenna is perfectly fine... this one is approximately L-Band, right?

But in the modern times, you can also build yourself a gyrostabilized parabolic antenna by COTS parts... I would say, costs for the project about 350 €, if you use an expensive controller board. While a 8-bit Arduino would be enough, a 32 bit controller makes the programming easier. The fitting driver board for two motors is also COTS today, no need for soldering, unless you like it...

Yes it is approximately L-Band
That is lot of money for me :/
If I am to have any money to spare I would like to build simpit for orbiter,
this works great and pictures are awesome without fancy extra equipment..
This antenna is for 138 MHz and preamps are for that freq also..It is more important to sort that out than to have tracking..I do not think we would get any better preformance if we were to build tracking