There are lots of web tutorials for SDR using gnu radio, I really like the one Mike Ossman does on the Great Scott Gadgets site[1]. My evolution was one of the cheap digital TV dongles, then a HackRF-1, and at some point next a LimeSDR.
Once you get the SDR side of things under your belt you can start picking specific radio sources to investigate whether it is sun spots, satellites, or something more mundane like the controls for R/C cars, garage doors, or wireless lights.
I just bought a RTL-SDR dongle and installed GNURadio about a week ago. So far I've gotten a basic FM (broadcast radio) receiver going, and am starting to port that over to narrow-band FM (so I can use it with my ham radio) and am looking at how to integrate a DTMF decoder. It's really fun stuff, and not very expensive to get started with the low end SDR hardware. I think my device cost me about $25.00 (USD) from a vendor on Amazon.
I haven't gotten as far as doing any of the satellite stuff yet, but that's on the list for "real soon now".
If you're thinking about taking the plunge, I'd definitely encourage you to do it.
That's awesome! Now I want that on my phone so i have a real tricorder. ;)
A random example of things you can get from there is the 3CAT-2 satellite which has a "magnetometer", "reflectometry" which includes targets like "altitude maps of the Earth, wind surface over the sea, deforestation..."
> The goal of this project is to make a collection of GNUradio decoders for the telemetry of different satellites. The decoders support submitting telemetry in real time to the PE0SAT telemetry server. Another goal is that the decoders are as easy to use as possible, to try to make more people interested in receiving digital telemetry from satellites and collaborating in online telemetry submission.
I don't know much about satellites. Is this data not collected by whoever owns the satellites? How does it help if volunteers collect this data?
This looks like a really cool project though, and I'd like to contribute once I've learned some more about it.
One of the major challenges in managing satellites into space is the long term commitment: getting it up there is a one time cost, it can be high, for sure, but it can be managed, and is getting cheaper.
The real challenge is having base stations to collect the precious signals you want to receive in the first place. To get continuous input, you need stations all over the planet, something only empire-level states can usually accomplish. Now imagine you have a satellite that is in geosynchronous orbit that needs to be also sent instructions about how to reposition itself, and you have a real challenge on your hands.
The idea is that we can leverage free software, hacker and ham communities to collect data. It is a distributed and decentralised community that is highly skilled and can perform such data collection fairly well, given the proper tools and equipment. It's not yet sending data to satellite, as far as I know, but it's a nice first step.
As for property of data, I guess those are public projects, and therefore it is public data... As an example, all NASA output is public domain, by principle.
So, if I launch an open communications satellite (or ring of satellites) to relay messages for other satellites to my ground station, I could enable a whole new industry? Food for thought.
One example of this class of network is the NASA TDRS network (http://tdrs.gsfc.nasa.gov/ or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracking_and_data_relay_satell...) that they use for everything from relaying data from the science stations in Antarctica to supporting old shuttle launches. They launch a updated satellite every now and then. It's a pretty cool network if you ask me :)
> The real challenge is having base stations to collect the precious signals you want to receive in the first place. To get continuous input, you need stations all over the planet, something only empire-level states can usually accomplish. Now imagine you have a satellite that is in geosynchronous orbit that needs to be also sent instructions about how to reposition itself, and you have a real challenge on your hands.
If it's in geosynchronous orbit then you only need one base station, no?
