Category: Electronics

Introduction This summer I did a lot of work down at Toronto Harbourfront. I brought my laptop and various receivers and micro-controllers with me. When the sun was shining, I used a portable 80W solar panel to power everything and on cloudy days I used a portable 85W lithium battery pack. I didn’t get a… Continue reading Portable Lithium Battery AC Output

Introduction In the previous three posts we looked at planning for reception of GOES16 weather signals, signal capture and signal decoding. In this post we use a temporary dish support to receive GOES16 over a short time period by keeping the Viterbi error rate as low as possible. Due to the author’s location, a rigid… Continue reading RTL-SDR for Satellite Weather on GOES16 – Image Capture

Introduction In the previous two posts we looked at planning for reception of GOES16 weather signals and we did a signal capture as shown above. Improved performance resulted when the LMR400 coax was inserted between the SAWBIRD Filter/LNA at the back of the antenna and the RTL-SDR . From the first planning post, the average… Continue reading RTL-SDR for Satellite Weather on GOES16 – Signal Decoding

Introduction In the previous post we looked at planning for reception of GOES16(R) weather signals. We determined a ball-park estimate of a received level at -84dBm (assuming a satellite transmit power of 60dBmi) at an azimuth of 174deg and elevation angle of 39.4deg for a location in Toronto, Canada. Signal Capture for GOES16(R) Figure 1… Continue reading RTL-SDR for Satellite Weather on GOES16 – Signal Capture

Introduction In previous posts we looked at receiving weather information via HFWEFAX (Ref.1) and GRIB files (Ref.2) over an internet connection. In the next several posts, we will examine receiving weather information directly from a geostationary satellite GOES16(R) and see if it is suitable in a marine application for solo/family blue water sailors. My thanks… Continue reading RTL-SDR for Satellite Weather on GOES16 – Planning