New to Meteor Detecting

[jarraman]

hi al.

i have filled all the boxes in.now when you say correct .dat file.what is that.

i have it running,,, live spectrun lab. i am getting about 40 to 50 hits an hour,but nothing shows up in the boxes,god,i hate explaining things,lol.i am useless.

if you ever have any spare time,could you explain bit by bit what you do,i would be grateful.

ken.

[Al.Grant]

Hi Ken,

Sorry for the delay, I've been away for the past week or so and not had a chance to look at anything.

I'll be spending a few hours over the next couple of days getting my detector back up and running and once I've done that I should be able to help - It'll refresh my memory as I've not looked at Spectrum Lab/Colorgram for over a year.

Once it's working I should be able to let you have the script I'm using.

However if you look back at page 4 of this thread you'll see I'm using a modified version of the script on this page  http://cmhas.wikispaces.com/slmeteor 

See here:   

 

This is what I used/followed to first get me up and contributing to RMOB.    Use the latest version.  In the script you'll see "DIR="c:\\spectrum\\meteorlog\\" 

You'll need to manually create the 'meteorlog' dir for it to work.  Just going from memory I think this is all you'll need to create the files for RMOB

Hope that helps

[jarraman]

hi al.

thanks for replying,i will have a look at the script you posted. I'm determined to get it running,but like i said earlier,not the best with computers.

since i changed the antenna from the loft to the chimney,massive improvements,40-50 hits an hour,mainly afternoon best time.its aligned in the vertical plane if anyone is interested.

how do i manually create the meteorlog dir.,,,,,,,.

 

ken.

[Al.Grant]

Ken,

Give me a couple of days to get my detector working again and that should be enough to actually remind me how to get it all working.

I've already got SpecLab running the script again and it does create the .dat files (after it's been running for an hour).

For the directory you'll need to open windows explorer and go to your spectrum lab install directory -- or if you have a spectrumlab desktop icon just right click it and select

'Open File Location' -- in there just create a new directory and name it meteorlog.

It's going a bit slower than I'd planned because I'm starting from scratch and trying to get it working on one of these 'stick PC's'  https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B015Q2A3NA  - Cheap enough at less than £70 and it free's up my main home laptop .....  also cheaper to leave running 24/7

It seems to be running things pretty well at the moment.

Once I know it's all working again I can save a copy of the script file and also a .USR config file.  Although your system will be different to mine it should make a decent start point

and the script isn't too hard to tweak.

[jarraman]

hi al.

thanks again for replying.like the idea of that stick,looks good.

running cheap sounds good,keep the wife of my back,lol.

ken.

 

[jarraman]

hi all.

still can not get colourgramme to work,but thats another story.

while sitting at the computer looking at spectrum lab,there was a strong whistle,when i looked at it,i was going diagnoal across the screen,on a hunch i checked where the ISS was and sure enough it was passing over north africa.

anyone confirm this,or am i barking up the wrong tree.by the way,the time was 12-51pm local(newcastle uk).

finally got pic sorted,problem with other pc.

cheers ken.

[SteveNickolls]

Hi Ken,

Pleased you are detecting things :-)

I am sorry however that you have been unable to get Colourgramme to to work.

It's quite likely it is the ISS, the return signal you see depends on the pass and atmospherics. On particularly long detections I have used ISS Tracker to verify where I first picked up the signal and at intervals until it ended and then plotted them on Google Earth. I'll try and attach a map made on Google Earth of two ISS passes, one in July and the other in November last year for your interest. I was amazed the November first point of detection was made off the West coast of Eire and ended off the West coast of Rome (wow!). The earlier detection in July commenced off the East coast off the Spanish-French border then across Europe and last contact was to the SW of Budapest. I hope you can make out the map :-) I also append the screenshots with the position of the ISS from ISS Tracker at the time of each screen dump which I hope you find interesting. 

Every good wish for further successful ISS detections by you Ken!

 

Best Regards,

Steve

ISS Track on Google Earth 8.11.2015.docx

ISS track 8.11.2015.docx

[The Admiral]

Hi Ken

I think you might be right there. This is from Heavens Above ISS predictions (http://www.heavens-above.com/PassSummary.aspx?satid=25544&lat=47.322&lng=5.0415&loc=Dijon&alt=249&tz=CET)

Time I think is European time because I centred on Dijon (where the transmitter is). As your trace is decreasing in frequency I guess the ISS will be approaching. You often see the trace vary cyclically as the Graves transmitter switches beam direction.

Sorry to hear that you can't get Colorgramme to work, but I can't help there as I've never used it.

Ian

[jarraman]

hi steve and ian.

im glad the two of you see seem to confirm the iss theory,some thing else to look out for.

i will keep plugging away at colorgramme,it will be something simple.

ken.

[Al.Grant]

Ken,

I've had an issue getting Colorgramme to work over the past few days, which was frustrating as it worked straight away last time.

I contacted the RMOB website and the guy who wrote the program thought it was because I am using 64 bit Win 10.   He suggested changing colorgramme to run under Windows XP compatibility mode  (right click > Properties > Compatibility).

As soon as I did this it started uploading and showing up on the RMOB site straight away.  I also set it to run as Administrator 

I wouldn't have seen this on my old PC as it was running and older 32bit version of Windows.

 

Al

 

[jarraman]

hi al,thanks for that,will check it out this afternoon and let you know,

ken.

[SteveNickolls]

I've just turned off the equipment after collecting data from the peak activity of the Perseid shower this year and thought I'd share my detections etc. with everyone to allow comparisons. The data shows my results from 2015 and this year over the same four day period. The maximum number of meteors detected per hour was slightly up this year (176) compared to 160 last year, so a 10% increase but not the higher level many predicted. This year the peak came a day earlier than in 2015.

Specific Perseid Comparisons.xlsx

Excuse my poor skills using Excel but here is the data in graphical form-

Perseid Meteors 2015 and 2016.docx

It would be good to see what others found this year.

Cheers,
Steve

 

[Stub Mandrel]

On 23/07/2014 at 19:58, David_Pickles said:

I hope this helps.

I know this is an old thread, but having been scared witless by the guides google threw up. your has got my SDR working.

 

Now I need a Yagi ?

My dear old radio ham grampy would be rolling in his grave if he hadn't been cremated...