Weather satellites code for Linux

Automatic scheduling and processing for polar weather satellites passages (NOAA, METEOR) in bash scripts using third party software.

• Works for APT of NOAA 15, 18, 19

• Works for LRPT of METEORs

• Added METEOR-M2 3

• (First working attempts for LRPT METEOR M2-2 (added TLE name/frequency/demod options) - satellite not available)

• List the passages for the current day above a minimum elevation using Predict

• Submit jobs on the linux 'at' queue for each passage

• Each NOOA's job records the audio of the passages (rtl_fm), resamples it (sox) and produces, if possible several VISIBLE and IR pictures with a map overlay (wxtoimg, wxmap)

• Each METEOR's job records the raw data of the passages (rtl_fm), demodulates it (demod), decodes (decode) it and produces a composite VISIBLE and IR pictures

• NOAA's passages with audio file too small are not processed (something wrong happened during the recording)

• NOAA's images that trigger some warnings of wxtoimg are moved into a deleted/ folder (usually the S/N was too low)

• NOAA's visible images are produced only if the visible channel is active, otherwise only the combined IR is produced

• METEOR's IR image is produced together with the composite one if both channels are active

• METEOR's images with low brightness are moved into the deleted/ folder (usually was a bad acquisition or late evening)

• A recording in progress prevents any other recording scheduled, so there is not a check of eventual overlaps

• A METEOR passage will stop any other running acquisition (that will be normally processed)

• Each time the scheduler starts cleans the 'at' queue and all the running 'rlt_fm' jobs that might be stuck in the system

• Single config file (but still some other hardcoded parameters for the recordings) with minimal sets of checks of it

• Rectify implemented for METEOR's images

• Included script to produce an animation from Mercator projections

• Tested on Fedora and on Raspberry Pi

Paolo Franchini 2022 - pfranchini@gmail.com

Setup:

Various prerequisites:

Create a directory for the scripts and for the output images in your home directory:

mkdir ~/Satellite

Install the followings as superuser. For Fedora-like

yum install gcc ncurses-devel rtl-sdr sox at bc git make cmake
yum install ImageMagick
yum install fpc
yum install libjpeg*
(yum install gqrx)
(yum install ffmpeg)

or for Ubuntu-like distos (e.g. Raspberry Pi OS):

apt install gcc libncurses5-dev rtl-sdr sox at bc git make cmake
apt install imagemagick
apt install fpc
apt install libjpeg-dev
(apt install gqrx-sdr)
(apt install ffmpeg)

Scripts:

git clone https://github.com/pfranchini/weather-satellites.git ~/Satellite/code

Predict:

git clone https://github.com/kd2bd/predict/ ~/Satellite/predict
cd ~/Satellite/predict
sudo ./configure
(echo "alias predict='~/Satellite/predict/predict -q ~/Satellite/code/<location>.qth -t ~/Satellite/code/weather.tle'" >> ~/.bashrc)

APT decoder:

cd ~/Satellite
wget https://wxtoimgrestored.xyz/downloads-src/wxtoimg-linux64-2.10.11-1.tar.gz
mkdir ~/Satellite/wxtoimg
tar xvf wxtoimg-linux64-2.10.11-1.tar.gz -C ~/Satellite/wxtoimg/
ln -s ~/Satellite/wxtoimg/usr/local/bin/wxtoimg ~/Satellite/wxtoimg/wxtoimg

or for Raspberry Pi

wget https://wxtoimgrestored.xyz/beta/wxtoimg-armhf-2.11.2-beta.deb
sudo apt install ./wxtoimg-armhf-2.11.2-beta.deb

Register WXtoImg as in https://wxtoimgrestored.xyz/downloads

Update TLE/Keplers:

wget -O ~/Satellite/wxtoimg/usr/local/lib/wx/tle/weather.txt http://celestrak.org/NORAD/elements/weather.txt

or

sudo wget -O /usr/local/lib/wx/tle/weather.txt http://celestrak.org/NORAD/elements/weather.txt

LRPT demodulator:

git clone https://github.com/dbdexter-dev/meteor_demod ~/Satellite/meteor_demod
cd ~/Satellite/meteor_demod
make
sudo make install

LRPT decoder:

git clone https://github.com/artlav/meteor_decoder ~/Satellite/meteor_decoder
cd ~/Satellite/meteor_decoder
source build_medet.sh

Rectify:

cd ~/Satellite/
wget http://www.5b4az.org/pkg/lrpt/rectify-jpg-0.3.tar.bz2
tar xvf rectify-jpg-0.3.tar.bz2
cd rectify-jpeg-0.3
gcc rectify-jpg.c -lm -ljpeg -o rectify-jpg

Usage:

cd ~/Satellite/code

create your own location file .qth and edit config.cfg with all the paths and other options. Now you can manually run the script

./schedule.sh

or as a cronjob to be run every day early morning, i.e. (the cd is mandatory):

01 00 * * * cd ~/Satellite/code; ~/Satellite/code/schedule.sh

Logs in: recordings.log, errors.log, jobs.log.

Output images (png and jpg files) as speficied in config.cfg.

More:

In order to reprocess a bunch of existing audio files

./apt_reprocess.sh <directory_path_where_noaa_audios_are>  
./lrpt_reprocess.sh <directory_path_where_meteor_audios_are>  

it would preserve the original time stamp of the wave file.

Animation (beta version):

In order to create a MP4 video using Mercator projections for a cropped IR passage (the coordinates are hard coded)

./video.sh <list_of_files.wav>

e.g.

./video.sh noaa/20200711-*.wav noaa/20200712-*.wav