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New to Meteor Detecting


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Ken, I've had an opportunity to look at the Starter Script and I don't think it has a threshold setting. So it's all the more surprising that you aren't receiving many events. Perhaps you could get a screen dump of the script that SL is using and post it here please?

Ian

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Hi Ken,

While your at it could you do screenshots of your circuit window in SL please and also shots of your Options/Audio Settings? Can I ask if in Audio settings you have got the FUNcube Dongle V2.0 as your Input device and your speakers for your Output Device? Also in Audio settings have you set your Soundcard sample rate to 192000 at 24 Bits and if so do you know if your pc sound card or sound chip allow these? You can find details of what your sound card/chip can do, they are found in-

Control Panel/Sound/speakers/Properties/Advanced

Have you had a read through of the SL manual which will help guide you more on this?

Cheers,

Steve

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  • 3 weeks later...
Greetings all,


I've just managed to get my Meteor Detector back up and running.  I lost everything when the PC that was running it suffered from a bit of a melt down.

A lack of spare time and spare hardware kept it off the air and I also seemed to have an issue with the FCD Pro+ bieng stuck in 'bootloader' mode and refusing to come out of it.



All is fixed now and things are pretty much up and running again.  It won't be running 24/7 at the moment as the laptop it's running on will be needed for other things.

I'm sure we need a new laptop at work so there may just be a spare one kicking around soon  :smiley:

I still viewthe detector as being 'on test' as I'm making a few change to the scripts.  I think I've found a better way to auto display the latest images on the web, including a 60 sec auto refresh of the SpectrumLab Waterfall display


In the past I was ftp'ing the images up to a wordpress site, this was causing some delays and occasional problems connecting as well as eating up bandwidth on the server (shared with my work website).  

For now it seems to be working better saving the images to Dropbox, can't believe I didn't try this sooner!


Reading back through this thread as a refresher (amazing how much you forget) I noticed the info on the GB3VHF beacon.

Has anybody had any success using this for meteor detection, rather than Graves?

Only wondering as a UK beacon would allow for detection of meteors over the UK (and possibly visible) rather than over the South of France.



Al

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Greetings Al

I'm glad to hear that you're getting it all up and running; you've not posted for a while and I've been wondering how you were getting on. Looking good, and I like your web page. A nice low noise level too; I wish I could get it as low as that, but the placing of my antenna is rather less than ideal. Some day I might get it mounted on the chimney, but that's when it starts to cost!

Using GB3VHF as a source for meteor detection had gone through my mind as well, but I think that there are number of problems. The main one is that you detect the signal through ground wave, whereas you want the source to be "over the horizon" and be undetectable except through the sky wave reflections from meteors. Secondly, the transmitter antennae are 3-element horizontally mount Yagis, so I would think that the main directed power is at low elevation, whereas for meteor detection you want the power radiated upwards, particularly where the transmitter is relatively close to the receiver. For example, the 50MHz Belgian BRAMS transmitters have peak power directed vertically upwards. Their power is 150W, compared to GB3VHF's 30W. Also, the output from GB3VHF isn't the desired continuous wave, there is a section of on-off morse and a frequency shifted period. BRAMS is the nearest site for detecting some meteors over the UK, but antennae will be ~ 3x the size! For information on BRAMS meteor detection, see for example http://www.britastro.org/radio/projects/BRAMS_Meteor_Radar.pdf

Hope that helps. Keep us posted on your progress.

Ian

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Thanks Ian,

Yeah I've been away from things for a few months, not managed to get much astronomy done.  Hoping to rectify that situation!

Hopefully it won't be too long before I can get something set up and leave the detector running running 24/7.

My old website went down when I moved servers on my work site and the back up failed, I still have some of the info but too much trouble to try recover it.

I still have lots of things that need to be added, but that will get done when I eventually get around to it.

My detector will probably go off the air for a few days starting tomorrow as I'm away from home for a 4 days and will be taking the laptop with me.

We're taking a few days sitting in a cottage in the middle of some woods.  Lots of deer, fox & badger running around. No TV and better still no street lights ......  trouble is the forecast is for cloud/rain all week

I'd had a quick look at GB3VHF and realised that it wasn't a CW beacon but hadn't picked up on the ground wave and low elevation issues.

When I first started to build a meteor detector I looked at BRAMS and discounted it due to the antenna size needed for a permanent setup.

I do have spare SDR dongle (similar to this one)  capable of 100khz - 1.7Ghz sitting idle in my spares cupboard and once things are up and running full time I'm going to look at putting that to some use.

Perhaps a temporary BRAMS config, if I can get hold of a suitable HF antenna.  Maybe I can find a suitable omni dir antenna and use it for some more general non-astro stuff, including listening in to the ISS as it passes overhead.

I'd also like to get a full time all-sky-camera up and running if I can.

But for now I'm just happy that the FCD Pro+ is back working, it got stuck in bootloader mode and took a good few goes to convince it to come back out.  

I was getting close to having to send it back to get it fixed when it finally came back to life and has been fine ever since.

Al

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post-46869-0-89838000-1451937211_thumb.ppost-46869-0-53066500-1451937228_thumb.phi ian and steve.here we go.

I changed the freq to 144428 to pick up the transmitter,no difference in sound,i then put it to 24,there was a change in that I had this repeating sound,,deffo no morse or anything,i then changed it back to graves freq,still had the repeating sound,so changed it back to 16,sound stopped,back to background noise again.im attaching some screen grabs for you,s to have a look at

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Ken, I think I follow what you are saying. Basically, you've not managed to receive the GB3VHF signal. It might be touch and go, as you are some way north of the transmitter, but if when tuned to 144.428MHz you would see a trace coming through at 2kHz. I'm not sure that what you were getting at other frequencies is relevant. Here's what I get, but I'm close enough for a good strong signal.

post-40604-0-94839500-1451940541_thumb.j

The trace may appear "thicker" than yours but that is because I have some different settings to you, but don't worry about that.

The only other thing is I see from your circuit is that you are putting one half of your signal through filter L3-L4, and the other half through R3-R4, but that is blocked. I suggest that you try bypassing both of these (see http://www.qsl.net/dl4yhf/speclab/circuits.htm#audio_filter) and see what you get. It might be interesting to tune again to the GB3VHF beacon and see if it makes any difference. The only other thing is whether your O/P device path is correct, but if you are getting some signals showing up on your waterfall, even if it's just random signals and/or interference, perhaps when tuned to  different frequencies, then I guess it's correct.

Good luck

Ian

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  • 3 months later...

well,hello guys.

immmmm backs,been a long time,but working 12hours a day 7 days a week takes it toll,but that job finished now .bought new antenna same as gasmans and also put it on my chimney,what a difference,got 5 hits with in 10 mins and also getting the whistle now,so happy days.at the moment setting up remote computer,save me sitting in the shed,lol.next thing to look at will be sending the information through colourrama is it?.will check it properly.thats all for now.

ken.

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Welcome back Ken, I'd wondered what had happened to you :icon_biggrin:. Glad you're making progress with your set up, it makes all the difference if you can get a good view of the horizon; imperative really.

I think the programme is called 'colorgramme', though I've not used it myself.

Ian

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hi ian.

got the remote computer set up,works a treat.colourgramme,yep thats it,i will look into that.

had some good hits this morning,4.00am ish.around the 2200mhz mark,need to look into the different lengths and shapes,see what they mean.

ken.

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Hi Ken

Well, strictly they are all inbound :icon_biggrin:. That may seem an obvious statement, but in my experience what I detect may, or may not, show the initial strike, which I think comes from reflections from the head but always starts at a frequency above the Graves frequency. The main body of the reflection comes from the essentially static ionisation trail and is more-or-less at the Graves frequency. The fact that your signal centres around 2.2kHz suggests to me that you've ~ 200Hz offset, i.e. although 'tuned' to the Graves frequency, it isn't quite. This discrepancy is quite normal, but it is useful to know how big this offset is. Have a look at recent posts and my suggestion at using the GB3VHF signal to calibrate your set up.

Analysing exactly what the traces mean in terms of what a meteor is doing is pretty obscure!

Here's a trace from the Leonids last year.

NOV-18~13.52.37.jpg

This one shows a very pronounced 'strike' trace followed by the static reflection trace, at around 2kHz. Quite often though, a strike trace isn't observed.

I think it would help visibility if your plot only covered from, say, 1000hZ to 3000Hz, and you raised the background from black to something just visible. That way any faint signals will be better seen.

Ian

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hi ian.

thank you for that,thought it was a bit black,now a dark blue and have also set it to what you said.thanks.I have another question now for any one out there who can help me.

can anyone tell me how to set up colorgramme,i have downloaded the software,filled in the required boxes,it says it is live,but nothing seems to happening.not sending any information to the RMOB site.

thank you,, ken 

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Hi Ken,

It's been a long while now since I used my meteor system (been concentrating on DSO imaging) and I've had to search back, actually on this thread, to find out how I managed to get Spectrum Labs to talk to Colorgramme. I'm still hazy (very sorry) but I ended up having to use a conditional action script that sent data to a file that Colorgramme could access (I'm not sure now if the basic scripts from S@N actually do that or not-possibly not I imagine). I then had trouble getting it to work but what I should have been doing is when I was in Colorgramme I was trying to 'open' the RMOB data file in the meteorlog folder rather than clicking on the 'select' option. Clicking on 'select' made everything visible in Colorgramme. I then found colorgramme would report my data every hour (I set it for each hour). However I finally wondered over the usefulness of reporting my data as almost everyone reporting had systems that gave different results and really questioned why I was doing it. For a time after that I kept data to record background meteor numbers and showers but as I said earlier moved across to doing DSO imaging. 

If you read through this thread there are links to various conditional action scripts you can try which should work with Colorgramme. Some of the scripts have typing errors so do please check them. I'm not a programmer but it may be easier for you. There may also now be newer CA scripts you may find online.

I'm sorry I can't help much more Ken. I think if I went back to this I would not bother with Colorgramme.

Cheers,
Steve

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  • 3 weeks later...

hi steve.

give up for the time being on colorgramme,lol.think the problem was with the computer,VISTA.

but still detecting.when the club finishes the new dome,we will be setting up a meteor detecting group in the club,so what i have learned in here will be very helpful.

regards ken.

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Due to numerous distractions, delays and frustrations my meteor detector has been offline for months  (mostly a lack of spare PC/Laptop).

I'm hoping it will be back on the air soon.  Middle of next week I've got a 'Lenovo Ideacentre Stick 300' stick PC arriving for use at work:  https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B015Q2A3NA  

It comes loaded with Win10 and I know I can use TeamViewer to log in and control it remotely.   I'll be holding it at home to try it with SpectrumLab & FCD Pro+ and I also want to try it with another antenna as an ADS-B aircraft detector (a bit like FlightRadar24).

Being a 'stick PC' its spec isn't going to set the world alight, but I'm hoping it will manage SpectrumLab and it's certainly small enough to sit in a discreet location.  I've checked software install sizes and it shouldn't be an issue.

I'm confident the ADS-B tracker will work, just not sure how the processors will take the SpectrumLab workload.  If it all works then at less than £70 it's a nice cheap, low power option to leave running the meteor detector 24/7.

 

 

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On 01/05/2016 at 18:50, jarraman said:

hi ian.

thank you for that,thought it was a bit black,now a dark blue and have also set it to what you said.thanks.I have another question now for any one out there who can help me.

can anyone tell me how to set up colorgramme,i have downloaded the software,filled in the required boxes,it says it is live,but nothing seems to happening.not sending any information to the RMOB site.

thank you,, ken 

Hi Ken,

I've not looked at colorgramme for a few months (my detector has been down) but I had a similar issue when I first started.

When you filled in the 'Observer' tab did you fill in ALL the boxes?   

My issue was that I didn't fill all the location boxes, the lat & long boxes AND the google map location.  I also filled in any blank boxes with  'none' if needed.

After that you need to select the correct RMOB .dat file and it should upload.  I can't help much on the creation of the .dat file as mine was created by the script I was running.

I do have a copy of the script that I can make available, but it might need tweaking to your system.

 

Al

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