Receiving and Decoding Weather Satellite Data
I built an antenna to receive images captured by NOAA and METEOR weather sattellites.
Overview
This project sounds pretty exciting and it certainly is - yet it's really not that hard to pull it off - provided that you have some electronics tools and some time to learn to use the software etc.
It all started with a series of YouTube videos posted by The Thought Emporium.
Hardware
In order to actually receive the images you need a Double Cross Antenna and an SDR. I used a NESDR SMART, other models will work as well.
The build process for the antenna is described here.
If you own a 3D printer, you can print my mounting piece. It holds the antenna segments at exactly the right angle.
Software
To predict when a satellite will pass over your location in the sky, I used orbitron.
To record the actual data from the SDR, I used SDR#.
Finally Audacity and WXtoImg are used to pre-process and decode the data.
The decoding process is explained in this video.
Notice that I did not link to WXtoImg, the site has disappeared and is now hosted somewhere else. Use Google to find the download.
Images
Here are some additional images of the project.