Automated Weather Satellite Ground Station (Mostly Made From Trash)

I've just finished a major upgrade to my DIY satellite ground station. This involves a larger (7ft diameter) dish for geostationary GOES-East. I also moved my QFH antenna that receives Polar-Orbiting NOAA and Meteor satellites on VHF frequencies.
This project had some ups and downs, as do most of my builds! I'm using as much second-hand and free equipment as possible to keep costs low. The big dish was a former C-Band television antenna that I found on Craigslist, someone wanted it out of their yard. The L-band feed for GOES is an old coffee can or "cantenna", similar to what you'd use for long-range Wifi. The QFH antenna is one I built from plumbing parts a while ago, in this video: • Automated Home Weather...
You can also see some of the other antennas in prior videos, such as my rectangular TV dish: • Free TV With An Old Sa... and my folded-dipole UHF antenna: • Installing Big Surplus...
Some of the software I'm using for this project includes:
- Goestools (github.com/pie...)
- Satdump (www.satdump.or...)
- SDR++ (www.sdrpp.org/)
- Raspberry-NOAA V2 (github.com/jek...)
- Vitality-GOES (github.com/JVi...)
I found Carl Reinemann's how-to guide for Goestools very helpful:
- usradioguy.com...
NOTES: I used a TV coax cable instead of a USB extension cable described in the above guide. I'm also not using syncthing as described in this guide, and I had to make one other change to the Autostart section. In rc.local I added "sleep 10" (without quotes) just above the two calls to goesrecv and goesproc.
Also thanks to ‪@dereksgc‬ and some of his associates for suggestions along the way!
Some of the hardware that I actually purchased includes:
- RTL-SDR (amzn.to/44GnpMY)
- SAWbird+NOAA (amzn.to/3wEmGiL)
- SAWbird+GOES (amzn.to/4agArSB)
- Raspberry Pi 4 B (amzn.to/4akSl6w) (You'll need two if doing both types of receiver!)
- External Bias Tee (amzn.to/44Garyy) (optional)
(Buying from these links give me a little cut without charging you more, they're a great way to help out my channel!).
Saveitforparts t-shirts and other merch at saveitforparts...
Join this channel to get access to perks:
/ @saveitforparts
Or support me via Patreon at / saveitforparts
Check out gadgets and devices I like at www.amazon.com...

[@thebroshow6688]

waiting on the quantum computer and nuclear reactor (made from trash) episode !

[@hunterdixonrickthewalkingd6567]

😂😂😂😂😂

[@gkcnalaka]

😂😂

[@saveitforparts]

I keep meaning to make a radiation detector out of cold packs and alcohol, that's been on the list forever!

[@thebroshow6688]

@@saveitforparts i think a cloud chamber would rock. Get some radioactive material from the trinity site and stick that in there with your cold war stuff!

[@Allan_aka_RocKITEman]

​@@thebroshow6688>>> I actually thought of _Cloud Chamber_ as well.

[@spergnation1859]

"It's a nice rainy day today" he said with a smile on his face. You are such a breath of fresh air man. Your positive energy draws me to your videos as much if not more than the cool stuff you're doing.

[@ryanfrogz]

With how dry the last few years have been around here, any rain is a welcome sight!

[@rubenskiii]

@@ryanfrogz here it's the other way around, days and days of rain and thunder. The slugs have taken over the country!

[@kevinstewart8]

So true 💯

[@olleinsulander]

Couldn´t agree more! He is such a nice guy!

[@robertmayer7678]

Your audio when you were on the house roof was great.

[@Jeff-so3kj]

I am sure I have said it before but it bears repeating, I appreciate the fact you show the learning process. So many times I will watch a video and it will make something look easy and then I try and there are 15 things the video doesn't talk about that could go wrong or that you need to know before you can get something to work. Your videos show the reality of trial and error and the real frustrations of doing something that hasn't been done before or in a new way.

[@saveitforparts]

I probably still don't show ALL the errors, that would make for a 2hr video! I do try to cover major problems along the way though!

[@SawdustSoftwareSiliconChippy]

I agree. We get to see, not all goes to plan, but success can be achieved, with some effort. Something that we don't usually get to see, and then wonder why we (ourselves) can't get the same results. Because the realities have been edited out, our expectations become unrealistic, only guaranteeing disappointments, and frustrations. Your candid examples, are great! Cheers. 👍

[@aspergerio]

Polarity, polarity, a polarising problem! I can only imagine how with the mix of linear and circular polarised signals in your part of the world how often it gets overlooked or confused. Looking forward to seeing you eventually get stuck into experimenting with custom & modified waveguides, dielectrics, and all that fun shit. 😸 Thanks for the interesting content mate!

[@lady_draguliana784]

13:50 if it was previously at ground level then it's likely a rock-hole from a lawnmower/weed eater. My grandfolks had one for Satellite TV from the 90's and, once proper cable was available, they abandoned it. the lower edge was chewed to hell before too many years from rocks kicked up while mowing.

[@saveitforparts]

This one was up on a pole above someone's back yard, I got it for free in exchange for taking it down. It didn't seem like the type of neighborhood for stray bullets, but could have been a kid with a slingshot or pellet gun!

[@karcinogen]

Love the antenna farm and I'm glad to see the old C-band dish go up. The audio on the roof sounded great to me. Can't wait to see more

[@gannas42]

Fantastic video - a little radio, a little linux, a wild ansible appearance, a mouse, and roofing education! 😅 Thanks!

[@jeremyemery1438]

Run a small copper cable to your waist to the grounding mast to dissipate static charge, I ground myself to my gutters every time I’m on my roof. Keep up the good work man, love the videos!

[@faxcorp]

It really does add to the appeal for your property. I'd like something like that on my roof too

[@michaelterrell]

Those SDR modules were designed to receive satellite TV signals and were shipped with a 75 ohm European PAL connector. 50 ohm is used for power matching for transmitters or transceivers, 75 and 93 Ohm coax has lower losses so they are used for receivers and video cabling. The old C-band equipment used very expensive and large 50 ohm coax at 3.9 to 4.2 GHz. Thad fed 50 Ohm power dividers to feed the RF to multiple receivers in a CATV head end. If you use a C or kU band down converter, you connect it with 75 Ohm coax. RG6 or better coax was specified for this, because it has a lower capacitance per foot. RG62, 93 Ohm coax was used for AM car radios, since they were a voltage probe, rather than a traditional antenna. This was coupled to a parallel tuned circuit in the radio to maximize gain. This is why those radios had a trimmer capacitor that was used to maximize reception at the top end of the AM band. If you really want to set the feed properly on that dish, you need a signal source that you can aim the dish at. Then you adjust the focal length for maximum signal. A standard florescent lamp generates RF welll past 4GHz. I would wave a LNA or LNB across one at my bench to see if it had any gain before fuly testing and repairing them. A lot of them had a bad 78L05 or 7805 Voltage regulator so they were easy to repair. How did you determine the diameter for the feed horn? It is basically used a a short section of waveguide. www.everythingrf.com/tech-resources/waveguides-sizes shows yoy the proper dimensions for each range: There are C-band WR-137 waveguide flange to "N" adapters that might work OK, I made mine from some damaged LNAs, but here is a commercial unit to see how they are built. I measure the length of the probe, then soldered it to the N connector before I bolted it to the casting. I used them to repair C-band RF modules for several years. I would pay $2 for dead modules, but most were easy to repair. I converted a crap RL Drake tunable down converter to a C-band signal generator. I fed it video, coupled into the tuning voltage to modulate it. I now have an extremely rare Microdyne C-band test set for this. It was built for production testing and may be the only one surviving. www.fairviewmicrowave.com/wr137-type-n-female-waveguide-coax-adapter-cmr-137-fmwca1049-p.aspx?gad_source=1 We had an HF/VHF antenna lab on the roof of the old Cincinnati Electronics building where they tested designs for military radios. We also had a 100 foot shipboard RADAR dish leaning up against the building that had been used to test military RADAR equipment when it was a Crosley, then an AVCO defense plant. I did QA testing on the PRC77 Manpack VHF radios when I worked there. I joked that if I could get it home to use it for satellite TV that it was bigger than my house but I wouldn't need a LNA because of its gain at 4GHz.

[@saveitforparts]

That's cool! You've got a lot more experience with this than I do, I just poke around with old junk until it works. I tend to use the GOES satellite as my fixed source, although the way this antenna is mounted makes it hard to reach the feed without swinging it back over the roof. The cantenna is left over from one of my earlier experiments with GOES, I followed some calculation guides online for a 1.7ghz waveguide and feed. Similar to the old 2.4ghz Pringles cans for WiFi, just larger. There are probably better and more efficient feeds I could make, I might play with it more in the future or try to upgrade to GRB reception with a circular feed. Lots of stuff on the to-do list :-)

[@michaelterrell]

@@saveitforparts I worked in TV Broadcast, CATV and manufacturing of Military and Telemetry equipment. I started out workroom with salvaged parts before I was 10. At 13 I went to work in a TV shop after school, so I started buying some tools, and new parts so I spent less time on each project. One of the links I provided shows diameter/frequency for circular waveguide, along with their cutoff frequencies. You can mount more than one feed horn on a dish, for different bands. The offset may require a slight re aiming of the dish and will cause a very slight loss in gain. Back in my CATV days there was the Simulsat dish that could hold around a dozen feed horns and didn't require it to be re aimed This let a system receive every C-band satellite they needed with that single dish.

[@kd9kck376]

Actually the rtlsdr blog branded sdrs have a 50 Ohm connector on it.

[@michaelterrell]

@@kd9kck376 What connector?

[@kd9kck376]

@@michaelterrell All RTLSDR Blog branded ones use normal SMA connector.

[@scottiniowa1]

Standoffs made from hot glue and wire nuts! Love it!

[@starrmann314]

The only person who can make an instruction sheet seem like a great weekend in April!

[@DelusionalCookie]

The five seconds of seeing satellite images of coronal mass ejections and solar activity monitoring was pure neuron activation.

[@___aZa___]

Your humor and the fun you have is so contagious!! I just love your projects!!

[@fotografm]

Excellent stuff ! Well done !!!

[@running11]

Iceland Calling, This video is awesome example of problem solving and enjoying the process. Thanks for all the effort in documenting what doesn't work with what does!

[@wickedmuffin76]

A TV with local channel reception is good to have as another information source during emergencies. I have a TV that is primarily used with a streaming box, but it is hooked up to an antenna and I run a channel rescan every couple months.

[@youzrnaim]

“The neighbors love it and it’s increased my property value!!”

[@bigguyprepper]

“60% math and 40% luck” is an accurate description of pleasing the RF gods

[@MichaelOfRohan]

I would put a grounded wire on a switch, keep the switch closed until you're ready to receive. It would be safer for lightning, too.

[@MAGGOT_VOMIT]

@ 1:30 you should label that big jar......."NOT BOOZE" to protect the lil neighborhood urchins. Thanks for another great upload. Those pics that came in look great!! 😎👍

[@plls5]

The amount of energy you have is frightening.

[@saveitforparts]

Ha, I feel like I never have enough to finish all the projects I start 😂

[@jacoleroux5569]

Great Video as usual , I like the way you do things I basically do the same. I will suggest you add a HEAT Sink to the Raspberry PI It will help a lot with keeping it cooler. Keep it up , thanks.

[@sarkybugger5009]

The wireless mic. actually sounded ok. It was picking up the traffic noise, but you were clear. Now you've got it (the dish) working, it's very impressive. Well done!

[@amtrak1007]

you have no idea how excited to see someone else having the same issues with the noaav2 that I have. I made the mistake of upgrading to bookworkm and boy did that break a ton of things.

[@currentfaves65]

11:46 Dude you absolutely crack me up !!! that is awesome. Love the can do spirit ! Always wondered if the factory roof racks could actually hold anything.

[@saveitforparts]

I have carried so much dumb stuff on those roof racks... I'm not actually sure if they're OEM or not, I think I just got cheap ones from Amazon. The car is all scratched up, but I don't care what it looks like as long as it's useful.

[@michaellichter4091]

I really enjoy these videos about satellites. This is the best weather to work on the antenna-anyone can do it in the sunshine. I run a Raspberry Pi 5 with the adapter board and a 1 TB SSD M.2 2280 PCIe NVMe. The Raspberry Pi 5 also boots from the SSD, which makes it very fast and provides plenty of space for many pictures. Updates are installed very quickly. I have Cura running on the Raspberry Pi 5 and use it to slice my 3D objects, which works super fast. I am always very happy when I see the joy and enthusiasm you bring to the projects, and now the antenna mast is supporting the house. Now the storm can come; the house is safe. 👍

[@AiMR]

Yeah, your wireless lavalier mic sounds great 👍

[@hony1717]

If you got some old heat sinks flying around, i am sure you got some in your collection xD, just glue (thermal adhesive recommended) some small one on the Raspberry Pi chip (silver in the center) to increase lifetime. Especially the rpi 4 tends to overheat. If you got a small 5v fan you can just connect to the 2 power pins and make it even better.

[@technikschaf1574]

I really need to build a better antenna, the idea to get satelite images yourself is so intriguing.

[@unl0ck998]

I want a compilation of all the "what? why?!" of that week long debugging

[@JamesHalfHorse]

Get a POE hat for the pi or a POE to USB adaptor. Then just one network cable up to the roof for power and data. Hopefully I can start on some of my satellite and lora projects too.

[@saveitforparts]

I just bought one of those, haven't tried one before.

[@JamesHalfHorse]

@@saveitforparts POE opens up a lot of options. There are the cheapies that grab unused pairs in the network cables or ones that are actually the 802.11 whatever (af?) that gives it some smarts. If it's real POE you are only limited by the wattage of the port. For example you can use a power injector on the ground up to a POE powered switch on the roof. It will supply power to the PI hat and you can get a poe to usb adaptor to power the LNA. Honestly if you put the PI's in cases with fans or a passive heatsink case you can probably get away with not needing the dehumidifier. Toss a desiccant pack or two in there. What I usually do for similar outdoor equipment. This will get any AC power out of the box on the roof and away from your antennas. Even if you don't go POE I would consider using a 12 volt DC power supply on the ground and convert it to whatever is needed on the roof using ali buck/boost converters. Don't be afraid of putting ferrites and stuff on the cables as well to knock down noise

[@aarongriffin81]

I'm with you on getting a good signal from Goes. The problem I have is that my dish is only 3ft. I used cardboard and foil tape to make it 42" and just barely got a partial image at one point. My best SNR was about 6dBi. I've made lots of feedhorns and the top 2 designs were a dipole with a 6"x8" curved reflector and the other was a 3 element yagi. I swear I could get a great signal with a 7ft dish.......ugh. Keep up the videos, you are my only inspiration to get Goes to work for me.

[@saveitforparts]

Hopefully you can find a bigger dish around! I've heard 3ft is about the minimum size you need, if everything else is perfect (feed, alignment, etc).

[@erickvond6825]

Try getting a metal project box to mount the Pi in. You're correct about the RF interference. It can make some seriously unwanted effects on your signal.

[@dougtaylor7724]

I would just about give you free rent on a house and shop I have just to watch you for entertainment. Every new video I think to myselfWhat is that young man up to now? Your wife must be the most easy going person in the world. Mine would run my ass off if I did this stuff. Keep it coming!

[@billyjackswildamerica6326]

Man I'm jealous! That's the setup I been trying to accomplish, along with airplane tracking. Congrats Dude!

[@hoteny]

Yay “automated”! It’d be so cool if it was like, self contained like a satellite, working for decades with low maintenance. Idk it’s just a cool thing to me.

[@saveitforparts]

I'm considering doing a self-contained system at Sandland that's solar powered and uses one of my weird old tablets to display downloaded data.

[@hoteny]

@@saveitforparts I would be very interested in watching such a video, and a “look back” once a few months / years have passed even.

[@francistheodorecatte]

you can get vents for enclosures like that with a one-way water permeable membrane that fit in a knockout plug; they're more expensive than free but worth it. I've got a GORE PMF100321 on the waterproof enclosure that holds the ESP32, battery, and solar charge controller for my weather station and it's never had issues with condensation forming on the clear bottom lid despite the relatively high average humidity here, and large temperature swings.

[@SawdustSoftwareSiliconChippy]

Rain, what rain? It's liquid sunshine! 😆 Great idea using the plastic pallets. However, the pallets will be pressing the stones through the tar. My suggestion, sweep away the gravel, to place large concrete paver (smooth side down), to support the pallets at the corners, allowing the pressure/weight to be supported on large and flat footprints, of the pavers. That should prevent, any penetration of the tar (IMO) Another great presentation, where perseverance wins! Awesome and inspiring! And the pictures (satellite) are great! 😍

[@ardnys35]

when you said you wanted to upgrade that raspberry pi and software i immediately thought "no way that'll go smoothly"

[@DSB1234567890]

I'd assume that the noise from the long USB cable wasn't from RFI interfering with the SDR-RPi communication (since it's digital). Rather, the USB cable could have been generating RFI that was picked up by the antenna. I've had this happen with the USB interface cable for my HF radio, I'm not sure if the same thing could happen at microwave frequencies. I solved it by wrapping the USB cable through a ferrite several times. With a long run, I'd recommend doing that at both ends. This is a good practice on just about any power/data cable near RF equipment to prevent noise.

[@bacare1971]

So much room for activities!

[@Top-Code]

"mostly made from trash" wait, i didnt know you made this out of me?

[@XxCrawdadCraigxX]

good video

[@TheChefmike66]

11:57 "Yeah this is grate!" I love you, man.

[@ReapWhatYouSowGardening]

You did a nice job! And I love the c band dish too. I have a dish 500 and 2 directv satellites for free tv

[@Thats_Cool_Jack]

11:08 this feels like the start of a flex seal commercial

[@migalito1955]

Yea, the pallets will work for you. Ideally, when you find enough salvaged wood a nice salvaged wood deck sitting on the pallets along with some deck chairs would be sweet. Food for thought, use your Nano Vna to check your antenna system for issues. I've found using my Nano Vna that I used old coax that had water ingress that destroyed it having a 50 ohm characteristc impedance. I also had a mucked up transformer that mucked up things. I think impedance matching is pretty important. When its off enough its like trying to start from a dead stop a car in 5th gear. But, 75 ohm instead of 50 ohm I think would give you if otherwise perfect a 1.5 for reflected power that as I remember is under a 10 % loss. So, not to big of a deal.....

[@stormchaser300]

To prevent static electric charge from the plastic pallets you could put rubber mats on top or them to prevent that from happening, 😁😁😁😁

[@firenado4295]

only thing I would have done differently was to not have the usb power bricks in the box as those usually make alot of rf interference. to fix the power issues, the PI has a +5 and ground pins on the gpio that you can wire the 5v supply to directly. most of the power issues I have run into is just the crappy usb micro b.

[@Pyjama_S]

The Sea of red error message looked beautiful

[@patchvonbraun]

You have something like 30dB of gain ahead of your coax cable. It *IS* lossy, but with plenty of gain ahead of it, that loss won't matter much. The SNR of your system, when there's an LNA "up front' is almost completely defined by the characteristics of the LNA--it's noise figure, and gain. See "Friis: Noise Chain Analysis". The loss of the cable between the LNA output and your RTL-SDR receiver won't matter until it's getting close to the same magnitude as the gain on your LNA. 10-15m of RG6 at GOES frequencies will be just fine. After all, they use RG6 in satellite TV systems as well, and they work just fine.

[@TheBananaPlug]

Great Video.. So much Deja Vue for me, my first house back in the Mid 80's had a flat roof on an extension that as a newly minted Ham Radio op I immediately saw as potential for antennas. Hauling that C band dish up reminded me of the day I decided to stick a scaffolding pole to brackets on the back of my house over the flat roof and then put up a stack array of 2 meter Yagi antenna, it was a lot of danger and no small amount of muscle and shear will power that saw success rather than any plan or attention to safety. Good luck and please continue to produce the content you do for as long as you can.

[@truthreigns7]

I will say you are dedicated.

[@L1mJahey]

11:52 So much space for activities 😃

[@rasprosecutor]

ideas for upgrading your house for a zombie apocolypse : 1 Barricade windows , 2. Barbed wire, 3. laser IR rip wire, motion sensors, 4. Cameras. 5. Mounted semiauto carbine. 6. weather sats.

[@onmyworkbench7000]

The cantenna will work very well if you put the C-band feed horn back on the dish and measure the distance from the center surface of the dish to just 1/4 inch inside the throat of the feed horn this will be your focal distance. Also you will have to set the correct polarization by orienting the stube inside the can to the correct polarization. You may have to make small adjustments to the polarization once you have the focal distance set and the dish aimed at the satellite. Focal Distance and Polarization are very critical. You can remove the hail dents in the mesh by placing a block of 2x6 on the side opposite of the dents and tap the dents out with a rubber mallet. One last point anytime that you put a pipe in concrete to support a dish you should weld something to the pipe where is is imbedded in the concrete to prevent the pipe from rotating in the concreate.

[@saveitforparts]

I have a bolt through the pipe in the concrete, not sure if that was shown in the video. And I have the cantenna feed skewed for GOES-16. Focal point is still a little mystifying to me, if I move the can farther out to where the focal point should be, it doesn't get a signal.

[@onmyworkbench7000]

@@saveitforparts What is the diameter of the can that you are using for your feed? If it’s to big you could be over illuminating the dish when it’s at the correct focal point. When a feed over illuminates a dish it is seeing past the outer edges of the dish and it can receive a lot of terrestrial noise from the earth. It should be around 3.54331 inches in diameter, the stub for 1685 MHz (1685 MHz is the center of the Goes RF downlink band) should be around 1.761811 inches long and should be located about 1.761811 from the back of the can.

[@eswnl1]

@@onmyworkbench7000 I think the diameter is connected to frequency only. Cantenna gain will determine the illumination, which maybe dependent on the length, not diameter.

[@yarfw]

love your videos

[@mesochace]

Also, using a common mode choke on the usb cable solved the interference issues I had

[@aarongriffin81]

Same, I used the clam shell clip-on ferrite beads and it helped get rid of computer noise. I used the ferrites very near the PC to prevent the noise from entering the USB cable. I'm not sure where the best location is for the ferrite beads. While I was at it, I clamped a bunch of them on AC adapters and other USB cables.

[@isthattrue1083]

You're a neat dude.

[@materialdialectics]

Hey! For my telescope rig I recently got this USB extender the uses ethernet as the bridge. Basically two little boxes, one end you can plug in a bunch of usb stuff into, then it outputs the signal via the ethernet connected to the back; that ethernet cable connects to the other box inside your house and you then just connect to your computer via usb from that box. Works great. The one I got was around $60, there's cheaper ones but I haven't heard very good things about them. Because I was having the same problem before with usb extension cables, connectivity was really hit and miss.

[@saveitforparts]

Interesting, I may have to try that!

[@michaelfogarty3239]

to LNA OR Not to LnA, great work as always like the neew stairs. gets you closer to the hevens. i like how you say roouf roof. im shure if i acccent like aussies do you would sa you talk diffent

[@MrWompz]

Great content, funny, informative, and high quality!!

[@justinwallace8708]

I think that antenna mast is holding up your garage now.

[@saveitforparts]

It might be the strongest part of the garage at this point!

[@memejeff]

very cool stuff man

[@JordaoDM]

I like how you do things just like I do: reuse old parts and buy the fewer possible lol

[@nickseamus7340]

RE: your errors with trying to load a new / updated OS. You mentioned power supply issues, I would also consider maybe the SD card didnt do well in the heat of the box. I wouldve tried a new SD. Glad you got it working though! EDIT: never mind, you replaced it all lol

[@MichaelOfRohan]

I get so upset when people complain about youtube audio quality.. so many times, "what speakers are you using?" "Engine A5's"!!! Theyre watching a middle class tinkerer on $700 speakers. Complete bourgeoisie.

[@039dalekmoore2007]

Great to see the mesh dish up ! i have the same type in my back yard for the same use ,i think the focal problem could be H to V positioning of the dipole in the cantenna so can you rotate it ? The static problem could be some thing else ! we once had a old home and the wiring in the kitchen had been cut by the last owner and one end of the maiins wire was touching some plumbing so the house was live ! touching ground and the wrong metal some thing that was live would give you a kick alright ! touch the roof and ground with your multimeter on AC 200V and see if its what you would expect for your mains socket .

[@saveitforparts]

I did try rotating the cantenna a bit, the skew is supposed to be offset slightly and it does get better results if I match that.

[@AudiovisuelleDroge]

Love your videos, have been watching you for a while :) Audio on the roof was a lot better this time, still could probably lower the gain a bit. Sounds like it is still clipping gently.

[@wodowiesel]

nice progress bundling all antennas on 1 roof, adding a grounding rod would be wise or at least an inline protection. you can stick small coolers on the pis, helps in longterm or intense sessions. 73

[@lutomson3496]

I worked on many satellite programs over the years...for weather if you cant get through NOAA try the DMSP constellation and or GOES as you have shared it tracks more then weather and been around for 50 years... I worked on it for a long time each country has their own version and or sharing information data good luck..always enjoy your videos

[@saveitforparts]

I'd like to try DMSP, I've been trying to get into S-Band but haven't had the time for it!

[@VelocitysMovies]

damn thats so cool man

[@rubenskiii]

Cool video as always! Your neighbours must have a special bench or something where they can just sit down and watch your shenanigans. No offense but i would without shame. Beats bingewatching Netflix. Warm greetings from the Netherlands🇳🇱. Also, did i hear chicks?🐥

[@saveitforparts]

We do have some new ducklings, they were in the background of at least one of the videos! I might try to do a video with them at some point :-)

[@rubenskiii]

@@saveitforparts that would be awesome!

[@bernd-das-brot]

Hello, the dehumidifier was unnecessary anyway, the fan is sufficient, it also helps against too high humidity in the case, simply connect a hygrostat in parallel to the thermostat, even if it rains, the air outside can be drier than in the case. Even more important is a heater for frost protection, which can switch on at about 10°C, below that there is a risk of condensation on the slightly warmer components, which can lead to problems, especially with Raspberry Pis mounted without their own sealed case.

[@AlbertFilice]

Love the huge dish, that's so awesome

[@stormchaser300]

As far as your antennas go they should be 3 meters apart from other antennas so they dont interfere with the other antennas. As for your tin can antenna you could adjust the skew between horizontal and vertical to maybe some where between the 2 angles. 😁😁😁😁

[@saveitforparts]

Yep, I've adjusted the skew to where it should be, that definitely helps. I'm not sure I've got a full 3 meters between antennas, will have to adjust some things up there when I have time.

[@stormchaser300]

@@saveitforparts glad to help . you might get away with 1.5 meters or you could use this math for more accurate distance. Antenna Positioning: Distance Between Antenna For effective diversity performance, AB antennas should not be positioned less than ¼ wavelength apart, and ideally, they would be placed ½ to one full wavelength apart.

[@TechReclamation]

at at hospital I used to work at they had something similar to the tar and gravel roof setup. they had pathways setup to walk on and we were told not to go off the path because it would damage the roof. I'm not sure how they did it but it seems like they just had something just like you plastic pallet idea in use there so maybe that's a good sign good luck!

[@m1geo]

Seems like we do antennas in similar weather!

[@scowell]

Fantastic results from an old scratchy porno dish! Something to be said for keeping RFI away from the feedhorn.

[@bluefoxtv1566]

Try a powered usb hub on the pi. That may help with power delivery problems.

[@t0nito]

Yeah, I tried automating a system using a raspberry pi but it's just to frustrating, I ended up getting one of those HP elitedesk G2 mini PCs with a windows instalation and Satdump. Much better!

[@alexmiranda6107]

A large bag of silica gell dessicant would probably be a good enough dehumidifier

[@saveitforparts]

That's basically what I'm doing now!

[@isthattrue1083]

Oh you have one of those old galaxy satellite dishes.... You should build something to ease drop on ISS. See if you can get their video feeds.

[@lilloca]

I think the best thing to do is to test and try not always rely on the math

[@adandylife329]

What about a shielded outdoor USB cable? Heck, shield every link too.

[@gravspeed]

I had problems with a desktop CNC because of a ground loop issue and I solved it with a USB ground isolator, it was cheap on Amazon.

[@arjovenzia]

Ive found USB to be far more resilient than the documentation would suggest. the problem is the 5v voltage rail, often via teeny tiny wires. Ive run 30+ meters of USB over CAT5, which im told is technically impossible. but i used that with a wifi dongle and a high gain antenna to steal wifi, giving me internet for over 6 months, it works. the venerable 7805. I put the green pair of the cat5 to usb data to make things easy, n the other pairs, color was +ve, white was -ve. feed 12v up the wire, with a 7805 at the tail end, feeding the usb port. line voltage swang wildly, depending on tasks, 13v-10v, but thats why there is a regulator there. feed it stable 5v, and the usb thing kinda just works. later tests showed even a hardrive was usable. for those that are interested, it was a 4 element yagi built into a plastic butter tub. a few small holes in it to fit the directors and reflector, naked wifi stick soldered directly to the active elements. worked a treat. and a waterproof enclosure to boot. Taped to a broomstick, shoved in a gutter downpipe. around the corner, thru the window, lash it in. 12v from the PC up, USB with wifi down. a 7805, .80c? will solve all your usb problems. probably free, there are not many things that dont have one somewhere. Save It For Parts. My Dude.

[@arjovenzia]

I wasnt hooking up to my neighbours, I was hitting my local McDonalds. Free WiFi, all you can eat. about 800-900m, I never could figure out where their antenna was. it was supposed to be locked down, but you could just poke a local port regularly, and it would keep the gateway open. was pretty decent to. high latency, but heaps of bandwidth. kept me going thru student years.

[@saveitforparts]

That reminds me of college as well... I had one of the highest dorm rooms and could do some interesting things that would make the IT department really upset if they knew 😅

[@ahbushnell1]

Those lines of noise are maybe from a switching power supply.

[@aarongriffin81]

The USB charger adapters inside the enclosure made me cringe. I would rather have them outside of the box and then clip ferrite beads on the USB cable to keep the noise down.

[@gorak9000]

Probably the USB extension cable has some kind of boost converter in it to counteract voltage drop in a long USB cable - it's probably stupidly noisy. Every long USB cable I've taken apart has a USB signal amplifier in it for the data lines too that could be noisy, and that was all pre-usb3

[@riptwan]

you just know this dude is like 800 & was US POTUS once upon a time under a different name

[@Badg0r]

A great video as always. You could try to make wireless USB with raspberry pi W's ;).

[@42pyroboy]

Hekk yeah!

[@daviniusb6798]

Working on the roff musst be rough^^ Sorry mate, I love you ;)

[@jmac217x]

75 ohms is fine when you're matching to 75ohms, but it is standard across antenna feeds to match 50 ohms. If you're matching 75 to 50 you can expect -14db afaik

[@gorak9000]

I highly doubt his can-tenna feed is anywhere close to either 50 or 75 ohms, nor is that feed properly matched to the dish, so considering the comedy of mismatches that is the whole system, the cable being 75 ohms is probably the least of the worries

[@G36934]

LOL! Ive never understood the pi instruction card.

[@Cameronsutubes]

Sound is good , everyone thinks you're NSA with all the dishes

[@al3k]

7zip is almost from Amiga days i think.. or a linux port winzip alternative. Funny that tripped you for a mo. Classic little mousetrap. :)

[@saveitforparts]

I thought I'd seen all the zip utilities, always assumed they could all handle every format... but every now and then someone manages to be more obscure than necessary!

[@dewboy2005]

Coming from a WISP operator, your 60/40 antenna theory is spot on. I love watching your content and appreciate the effort you put into these videos! From your neighbor in Minnesota

[@saveitforparts]

Wireless bridge at the moment, I'm considering running a cable but there's not really a great route for it.

[@dewboy2005]

@@saveitforparts Wireless bridge works perfect anyway.

[@42pyroboy]

Good ol Gimp