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A Minimal LRIT GOES Receiver

pietern.github.io

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Re: A Minimal LRIT GOES Receiver

#11

Post by jonah »

pietern wrote: post #4

Hi everybody, cool to see this submitted on HN. I'm around for questions so ask away. Also beware that the guide is a little out of date: 1) the listed antenna is no longer available, but there are comparable ones for comparable or lower price, and 2) the SAWBird has been generally available for a couple of weeks.

Very cool, having some of the parts already, I'd love to build one of these.

A couple (unrelated) questions:

1) GOES receives data from remote terrestrial weather stations too, right?[1] Is that aggregated and rebroadcast in a way we can receive it?

2) Is data from MODIS available similarly to GOES?

[1] https://ftsinc.com/fire-weather/products/axiom-dataloggers/a...

Re: A Minimal LRIT GOES Receiver

#12

Post by RivieraKid »

Is the near-realite GOES imagery available to download over the internet?

Recently I've been looking for a way to download near-realtime Meteosat imagery. I thought, ok, I'll just download it from their web server. Turns out, you have to use a satellite antenna, receiver and buy commercial software... WTH? This is ridiculous in the 21th century. Why not put the imagery on the internet, for free?

Re: A Minimal LRIT GOES Receiver

#14

Post by rdtsc »

guywhocodes wrote: post #13

I wonder what a flat-earther would say about this backyard satellite photography example

Flat-earthers are fascinating. As long as they are not dangerous to themselves and others they are a good subject to study on how brainwashing, paranoia, and reality bubbles work. Also I wonder if some of them are secretly trolls. They don't believe it, but they spread it around to try to get others to believe just for fun. Then they also got a nice "mark" that's ripe for other cons and possibly to profit from ("send me PayPal money to buy this super secret flat Earth detector for $500"). I imagine their community is a goldmine for con-artists...

Re: A Minimal LRIT GOES Receiver

#15

Post by brian-armstrong »

rdtsc wrote: post #14
guywhocodes wrote: post #13

I wonder what a flat-earther would say about this backyard satellite photography example

Flat-earthers are fascinating. As long as they are not dangerous to themselves and others they are a good subject to study on how brainwashing, paranoia, and reality bubbles work. Also I wonder if some of them are secretly trolls. They don't believe it, but they spread it around to try to get others to believe just for fun. Then they also got a nice "mark" that's ripe for other cons and possibly to profit from ("send…

I believe at this point the number of ironic/trolling flat earthers greatly outnumber the genuine ones. It has reached meme status.

Re: A Minimal LRIT GOES Receiver

#16

Post by guywhocodes »

rdtsc wrote: post #14
guywhocodes wrote: post #13

I wonder what a flat-earther would say about this backyard satellite photography example

Flat-earthers are fascinating. As long as they are not dangerous to themselves and others they are a good subject to study on how brainwashing, paranoia, and reality bubbles work. Also I wonder if some of them are secretly trolls. They don't believe it, but they spread it around to try to get others to believe just for fun. Then they also got a nice "mark" that's ripe for other cons and possibly to profit from ("send…

About nine years ago I found out a friend of mine was a "flat-earther" online. He was very much under the impression that it was mostly an insincere and sarcastic group of people mostly trying to trick people that they actually believe this.

Today I'm not sure if 1. He was wrong about the movement. 2. They succeeded in convincing me and most of us they believe more than they do. 3. They convinced and attracted people and they actually on average do believe that the earth is flat.

Re: A Minimal LRIT GOES Receiver

#17

Post by Rebelgecko »

RivieraKid wrote: post #12

Is the near-realite GOES imagery available to download over the internet? Recently I've been looking for a way to download near-realtime Meteosat imagery. I thought, ok, I'll just download it from their web server. Turns out, you have to use a satellite antenna, receiver and buy commercial software... WTH? This is ridiculous in the 21th century. Why not put the imagery on the internet, for free?

NOAA has GOES and Meteosat imagery on their website. Meteosat is updated every 6 hours or so, GOES imagery is 15-30 minutes old depending on which image you look at

Re: A Minimal LRIT GOES Receiver

#18

Post by rdtsc »

guywhocodes wrote: post #16
rdtsc wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flat-earthers are fascinating. As long as they are not dangerous to themselves and others they are a good subject to study on how brainwashing, paranoia, and reality bubbles work. Also I wonder if some of them are secretly trolls. They don't believe it, but they spread it around to try to get others to believe just for fun. Then they also got a nice "mark" that's ripe for other cons and possibly to profit from ("send…

About nine years ago I found out a friend of mine was a "flat-earther" online. He was very much under the impression that it was mostly an insincere and sarcastic group of people mostly trying to trick people that they actually believe this. Today I'm not sure if 1. He was wrong about the movement. 2. They succeeded in convincing me and most of us they believe more than they do. 3. They convinced and attracted people…

> Today I'm not sure if 1...2 or 3...

Yeah! That's exactly what's fascinating about it.

I've met a contrails believer and, sadly, I was sure they actually believe it. But flat earthers are in a whole separate category where it is not clear if they are just trolling everyone. Your 3. is interesting at first they might take it up as a joke but then someone out there in the "community" is a better troll, and makes up a more convincing "evidence" and before they know some of the trolls start believing.

Re: A Minimal LRIT GOES Receiver

#19

Post by pietern »

jonah wrote: post #11
pietern wrote: post #4

Hi everybody, cool to see this submitted on HN. I'm around for questions so ask away. Also beware that the guide is a little out of date: 1) the listed antenna is no longer available, but there are comparable ones for comparable or lower price, and 2) the SAWBird has been generally available for a couple of weeks.

Very cool, having some of the parts already, I'd love to build one of these. A couple (unrelated) questions: 1) GOES receives data from remote terrestrial weather stations too, right?[1] Is that aggregated and rebroadcast in a way we can receive it? 2) Is data from MODIS available similarly to GOES? [1] https://ftsinc.com/fire-weather/products/axiom-dataloggers/a...

Great, if you end up building one, keep us updated (here or on Twitter).

1) Yes, this is DCS (Data Collection System) data. It's a very low bandwidth signal (300 or 1200 baud) that ground stations uplink to GOES on UHF. I found there are about 20k separate transmitters in some asset database I once found somewhere. Every one (or the set that's still active) transmits a tiny packet every N minutes (some every minute, others every 30 minutes). This data is also broadcast as part of the LRIT (GOES-15) and HRIT (GOES-16 and GOES-17) streams. There is no processing for this data in the goestools package yet, but you can get the originals and walk over the data. When I last looked at it, the format looked different per receiver, it is possible this is a per-vendor type of thing. Anyway, yes, you can get a copy of this data with the receiver described in the OP guide. See https://github.com/pietern/goestools/issues/11 for some more links.

2) AFAICT MODIS is a product derived from the Aqua and Terra satellites. Both are polar orbiting sats. You can look them up here https://www.wmo-sat.info/oscar/satellites/view/81 and it looks like they don't pack a "direct readout" transmitter, so you wouldn't be able to receive anything directly yourself. Compare this to the page for GOES-16 at https://www.wmo-sat.info/oscar/satellites/view/152 and you see there are a bunch of frequencies with details listed.

Re: A Minimal LRIT GOES Receiver

#20

Post by pietern »

RivieraKid wrote: post #12

Is the near-realite GOES imagery available to download over the internet? Recently I've been looking for a way to download near-realtime Meteosat imagery. I thought, ok, I'll just download it from their web server. Turns out, you have to use a satellite antenna, receiver and buy commercial software... WTH? This is ridiculous in the 21th century. Why not put the imagery on the internet, for free?

Yes, there are multiple interfaces.

This is a nice interactive one: http://rammb-slider.cira.colostate.edu/?sat=goes-16.

There is also an S3 bucket where you can find all data as soon as it is available: https://registry.opendata.aws/noaa-goes/.

But the fun part is receiving it in your backyard, of course ;)

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