- Mateusz Winiarski
SatNOGS (Satellite Networked Open Ground Station) is a open-source project consisting of network of satellite ground stations and a platform. Its goal is to track and monitor satellites around the world using multiple stations and make the gathered data publicly accessible.
Our goal was to create our own satellite ground station and to connect it to the SatNOGS observation network. For this purpose we created a station using a turnstile antenna connected to Raspberry Pi microcomputer.
Materials used:
- turnstile antenna – 1
- PCV pipe – 2
- 25.8 cm (3/8 λ) – 1
- as long as you need – 1
- aluminum rods – 6
- 16.35 cm (~1/4 λ) – 4
- 34.4 cm (1/2 λ) –
- 3d printed rods holders – 2
- coaxial cable – 5
- 75 Ω cable – 2
- 11.35 cm (1/4 λ) – 2
- 50 Ω cable – 3
- 11.35 cm (1/4 λ) – 1
- 22.7 cm (1/2 λ) – 1
- as long as you need – 1
- 75 Ω cable – 2
- hot gun glue – a lot
- insulating tape – a lot
- PCV pipe – 2
- RTL-SDR dongle – 1
- Raspberry Pi with SatNOGS OS – 1
- time – too much
- determination – adequately
Note that wavelengths were multiplied by velocity factor of given material. Full assembly tutorial can be found on Alicja Musiał's blog.
The station is working as expected and is returning quite good observation. Temporarily, the antenna is mounted outside the window of Garage.
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|---|---|
| The antenna with RTL-SDR dongle just outside the Garage's window | Interior of antenna |
You can see last observations and current status of station on its page in SatNOGS network.
| image |  |
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|---|---|---|---|---|
| observation id/link | 7807309 | 7818544 | 7819234 | 7819260 |
| satellite | 2021-091H | NEXUS | ISS | DhabiSat |
| transmitter mode | BPSK 4800 | CW Beacon | V/U FM | BPSK 1200 |
Sample observation waterfalls of the station with different satellites and dirrerent transmitter modes. Note that tangent-like lines are terrestrial noise
Next step is, after making sure that antenna is working correctly and mounting it on the roof, to make the station available for everyone to schedule observations.
To make an observation you have to:
- Log in to network.satnogs.org using Garage's credentials.
- Go to station page and check if it is in Online or Testing mode.
- Open Future passes tab and mark passes you want to observe (you can filter by success rate and max elevation in filters, I advise to set minimal max elevation to 45 degrees while the antenna is mounted on the window). Note that you can only set observations since 10 minutes from now.
- Confirm pass observation in opened card. If you set multiple observations, pay attention to overlapping.
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|---|---|---|---|---|
| Log in page | Station dashboard. Note that station is currently in Testing mode | Future passes, with filters applied | Observation settings. Default settings should be good, but you have to pay attention to overlapping | Observation is in Pending state and is waiting for the pass |
To see an observation you have to:
- Go to page of the observation (or refresh it).
- Check if the waterfall contains signal or not, and mark it Good or Bad adequately (guide)
- You can look on Audio, Data or Metadata cards for more informations.
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|---|---|---|
| Our observation with waterfall | There is a signal, so you should mark the observation as Good | Sample observtion data in HEX |
To log in to Raspberry Pi you have to:
- Log in to
UJ_WiFinetwork using your credentials. - Open Terminal (on Linux) or Powershell (on Windows).
- Type
ssh <username>@<address>, where<username>is Raspberry login, and<address>is an IP address fromlogsdirectory. - Type
yes(if you re logging in first time from your computer) and then a password.
Once you are logged in, you can:
- View SatNOGS Monitor (simple setup
satnogs-monitor -s 2909or full setupsatnogs-monitor -l 2909 --data-path /tmp/.satnogs/data/ --waterfall --spectrum) - Change configuration:
sudo satnogs-setup - See logs:
less +G temp_du.log