THE DIY SATELLITE WEATHE STATIONSample images from the project 

           

DO IT YOURSELF PROJECT.

  

The D.I.Y. Satellit weather station project 

The weather station is an ideal Science based project for school groups and for amateu constructors with skills in building small electronic circuit boards and associate hardware. The project described here uses a kit built receiver coupled to an antenn constructed from easy to get hardware, add a PC with a sound card (minimum specificatio  a 486 processor and 8 mb Ram). This is all that is needed to start receiving you own satellite weather pictures on your PC.

 

  

 The Receiver: Th receiver is the RX2 satellite receiver kit available to members of the Remote Imagin Group. Other commercial receivers could be substituted, however, this kit is a value fo money proposition that will not break the bank. To obtain the kit you must be a member o the Remote Imaging Group Remote Imaging Group whic is a group dedicated to amateur weather satellite watchers, their quarterly journal, RIG is an excellent, quality publication with projects, articles and images associated wit remote imaging.

Cost of RIG membership is Uk 11 pounds and Uk 15 pounds outside of Europe. The RX receiver kit is priced at Uk 49.5 pounds 52.00 pounds airmail outside UK. The whol project except for the PC should cost around AUD $200 depending on how resourcefu you with the hardware needed for the antenna. The software used is all public domai and costs nothing.

The Kit: Carefully read the instruction before you start building the kit and make sure you have properly identified all th components, take care with soldering the components onto the board and you should hav little trouble in

 

   

     The receiver printed circuit board showin the first layer of components mounted and the final assembly of th board.   

                         

The printed circuit board was then housed in a metal case with th optional level meter and an external power supply was obtained. Preliminary testing an alignment were done  and are not difficult providing the instructions are followed.

 

  

     Front and rear views of the finishe receiver mounted in a metal case measuring 200 x 130 x 65 mm

  

Antennas:  A number of antenna designs can be implemented but perhaps one of th best and most sensitive is the Tall narrow quadrifilar antenna < href="http://www.pilotltd.u-net.com/qha.htm">Quadrifilar Helix Antennas  Othe antennas such as the J pole J Pol antenna  Lindenblad and crossed dipole designs for the 137.5 MHz band shoul also work with varying degrees of success. Both the QFA (quadrifilar helix antenna) an the J pole antenna are very easily built using short lengths of copper pipe and a fe copper fittings, readily available from plumbing suppliers. The mast for the QFA is short length of 32 mm electrical conduit. Both of these antennas will give good receptio in most areas and will not cost very much to build. The instructions on the web pages fo these antennas are well set out and very easy to follow.

I haven't built this one but I include it here as its the best in my opinion.

 

      

Two images of the tall narrow quadrifilar helical antenna built from th plans found at the above web sites, showing the soldered copper elbows and the 4:1 balun.

  

With both the receiver and an antenna built all we need to do is hook the up and feed them into your computer sound card with decoding software and wait for satellite to pass over to fine tune the receiver.

The Decoder:  Decodin and displaying the images is done simply, with a fairly basic PC and sound card usin the WXsat version 2.4* freeware software programme. Remote Imaging Group has a free download facility Download the software and install it on your PC, plug the receiver output into your soun card and wait for the next satellite to pass overhead.

There are quite a few PC programs that track satellites in real time and these identif when and which satellite is in your stations range, the satellites that interest you ar Russia's MET 3-5 and America's NOAA 12 or NOAA 14. Recommended is Les Hamilton's  < href="http://www.riglib.demon.co.uk/">Footprint tracking software,  this is free public domain program. Current Kepler elements are needed to maintain accurat tracking on any tracking program, and current elements can be found at < href="http://celestrak.com/NORAD/elements/index.html">Celestrak  

Other equipment: Ther are other receivers, decoders and software that can be used for weather satellite station but few packages will be as cheap and as good as the one described here.

Other interesting links:  Communications Software < href="http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/HFFAX/toc6.htm">HFFAX       Geostationar Weather Satellite images Geostationar images  

© & ® Mark A Phillips, G7LTT 1997-2005
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