Meteor Detection via GRAVES - Trying to get it to work...

[Tomatobro]

2 hours ago, PhotoGav said:

Oh My God... we have a hit (I think!)...

I would put money on it that its a meteor. Frequency is right and duration looks good.

Congratulations

[wxsatuser]

2 hours ago, PhotoGav said:

Oh My God... we have a hit (I think!)...

This looks far more as I was expecting - is this a meteor?

 

 

If your using SSB set the dongle to 143.049MHz and then the signal should appear at 1khz and at least you know where it is and it's GRAVES.
You should be able to calibrate the dongle when you get a few hits and get the signal on 1khz as near as possible.

[PhotoGav]

2 hours ago, Ibbo! said:

Yes I was, it used to work fine but I am struggling with it this time around.That one was on the old PC and from 2016.

I got the dongle last year and fiddled with it and could not get it to work so it went in a box.

I am in the process of decorating and during the tidy round re- discovered the dongle (any excuse to avoid the D word) and this time I got it working but am struggling as it only giving a short "ping" , the sound is difficult to pick from the background mush and SL is not picking it up on the conditional actions.

I'm happy to hear that you have a perfect excuse to put down the paintbrushes! Good luck with getting it all working again. It is very much a dark art for me at the moment - it is slowly starting to make some sense, but if I open the settings panel in SL, I have mild palpitations of panic!

[PhotoGav]

2 hours ago, Tomatobro said:

I would put money on it that its a meteor. Frequency is right and duration looks good.

Congratulations

Thank you, I'll take that as definitive confirmation - hurrah, my first 'ping' !!!

[PhotoGav]

1 hour ago, wxsatuser said:

If your using SSB set the dongle to 143.049MHz and then the signal should appear at 1khz and at least you know where it is and it's GRAVES.
You should be able to calibrate the dongle when you get a few hits and get the signal on 1khz as near as possible.

I have it set to 143.048 MHz, so GRAVES pings are appearing at (or around) 2kHz, which they are appearing to.

[PhotoGav]

The system appears to be working. It ran all night and registered 34 events. Here are a couple of the screenshots:

 

 

 

The next challenge is to suss out Colorgramme and get it to generate a 'heat map' automatically... no doubt there will be more questions on their way very soon!

Thank you to the various people who have helped me get this far.

 

[andrew s]

Glad to see you have it working. Regards Andrew 

[PhotoGav]

34 minutes ago, andrew s said:

Glad to see you have it working. Regards Andrew 

Thank you Andrew. I'm waiting for the IT Department to provide me with a computer and then I will be able to install the system at the Observatory and introduce the pupils to it all. My target has always been to have everything up and running in place for the Geminids - I still have a bit of time!

[johnb]

Its so rewarding once it al comes together, im no expert but happy to help if you need it, spent a lot of time perfecting my own setup - nut when it works

John

 

[PhotoGav]

2 hours ago, johnb said:

Its so rewarding once it al comes together, im no expert but happy to help if you need it, spent a lot of time perfecting my own setup - nut when it works

John

 

Thank you John.

That screen capture looks excellent and has good information in the marker text. I have tried to work out the settings in SpecLab, but I am far from confident. It would be very interesting to see what settings you are using to obtain that kind of result, please.

[PhotoGav]

@johnb - John, I'm wondering if you could share the code that you use to determine the meteor duration, please? I can see the various lines of code in the Screen Capture Options / Conditional  Actions tab, and I can see that the current code that I have is definitely not a duration, but I don't see how to make it tally up a duration. Please help!

The other thing that I am struggling with is triggered audio capture - I would love to save a .wav file of the audio around a meteor detection, but for the life of me I can't work out how to make that happen. Any clues would be most welcome!

 

Thank you,

Gav.

[johnb]

Hi Gav

 

Sorry for the slow response - seem like things are progressing I have attached the script im using which is from this thread

I have made some changes but its east to follow - and there is an option to record sounds which works quite well

 

Have a listed to this Sporadic E induced event that I managed to record

 

If i can help in any way to get in touch

 

John

 

 

 

jberman.USR

[PhotoGav]

@johnb - fabulous, thank you for the .usr file and for the link to that excellent thread. I will try loading your usr file and see how it goes. Thank you!

[PhotoGav]

I used the @johnb settings file (thank you John!), modified it slightly for my set up and let it run through the night. Here is an example of what I have found this morning:

 

 

event20201108_064441_3.wav

WARNING - the wav file is quite loud!

Things seem to be working nicely now. Thank you @johnb for your help. 

The system only captured three screenshots through the night, so I guess it was pretty quiet on the meteor front. It did save quite a few wav files, but listening to them there doesn't seem to be anything relevant in the majority of them. Lots more tinkering to do to get this all working perfectly, but it's rather exciting to be detecting meteor reflections already!

 

[wxsatuser]

Sounds a bit odd to me and it's 400Hz off frequency

[PhotoGav]

49 minutes ago, wxsatuser said:

Sounds a bit odd to me and it's 400Hz off frequency

I don't know what it should sound like, but from what I've heard so far, it isn't that odd! As for it being off frequency - all the 'meteor events' it is recording are pretty much at that frequency, give or take. I presumed that the dongle is just slightly off and I haven't plugged in an offset value yet - is that fair?

[wxsatuser]

It does'nt sound like a typical ping but there is still a chance it is.

[johnb]

On 08/11/2020 at 11:18, PhotoGav said:

The system only captured three screenshots through the nigh

check my file as i set the Log_Threshold - the minimum duration of a meteor event that will be logged (in seconds) to quite a high number as im interested in longer events

[johnb]

Gav how is it going, are you making progress ?

 

 

Regards

John B

[PhotoGav]

On 24/11/2020 at 14:31, johnb said:

Gav how is it going, are you making progress ?

 

 

Regards

John B

Hi John, sorry, I missed this message during the week. Thank you for the contact.

I have just moved the whole system to the Observatory this afternoon where it will be properly installed (eventually) and the airwaves already seem to be much clearer. The aerial is still indoors (in the Obsy warm room), but it's nice and isolated up there. I will move it outdoors once I have a reliable system to fix it down!

This is the aerial in its new home:

 

It seems to be capturing much better 'pings'. Here is an example:

 

 

and its associated audio file: event20201128_151559_11.wav

 

Here's another ping, or is it??

 

and the audio: event20201128_154137_16.wav

What do you reckon to that event?

 

Everything is still being registered at 2300 Hz above 143048000, which is 300 Hz higher than the GRAVES signal. I think that the Funcube dongle must be slightly out with its tuning numbers. I see that there is a setting to make a global alteration to account for this, but I need a single test frequency to lock on to and make the adjustment. Do you know of a suitable frequency that I could use?

 

All in all, I think that the system is working quite well now and I look forward to seeing what it captures over the next few days and nights.

 

Thanks,

Gav.

[wxsatuser]

1 hour ago, PhotoGav said:

Everything is still being registered at 2300 Hz above 143048000, which is 300 Hz higher than the GRAVES signal. I think that the Funcube dongle must be slightly out with its tuning numbers. I see that there is a setting to make a global alteration to account for this, but I need a single test frequency to lock on to and make the adjustment. Do you know of a suitable frequency that I could use?

 

All in all, I think that the system is working quite well now and I look forward to seeing what it captures over the next few days and nights.

 

Thanks,

Gav.

You could try GB3VHF on 144.430MHz, it's in Kent near Wrotham and one beam is aimed 288degs.
I would think it should be audible near you if you have reasonable site.

It is GPS locked so should be very stable and bang on frequency.
Tune USB to 144.429MHz and you can adjust the carrier to that frequency.
As well as a carrier/morse you may hear some JT65B signals.
Morse starts every odd minute past the hour for 13seconds and JT65B every even minute past the hour for 48secs.

[PhotoGav]

38 minutes ago, wxsatuser said:

You could try GB3VHF on 144.430MHz, it's in Kent near Wrotham and one beam is aimed 288degs.
I would think it should be audible near you if you have reasonable site.

It is GPS locked so should be very stable and bang on frequency.
Tune USB to 144.429MHz and you can adjust the carrier to that frequency.
As well as a carrier/morse you may hear some JT65B signals.
Morse starts every odd minute past the hour for 13seconds and JT65B every even minute past the hour for 48secs.

That’s very helpful, thank you Mike. So if I point the aerial towards Wrotham (basically east from where I am), I should be able to pick up that signal, hopefully?

[wxsatuser]

6 hours ago, PhotoGav said:

That’s very helpful, thank you Mike. So if I point the aerial towards Wrotham (basically east from where I am), I should be able to pick up that signal, hopefully?

If you have a good VHF site, highish and in the clear I don't see why not, worth a try.

I can hear it, albeit I'm closer but it does'nt beam my way and my location is low down.

[PhotoGav]

5 hours ago, wxsatuser said:

If you have a good VHF site, highish and in the clear I don't see why not, worth a try.

I can hear it, albeit I'm closer but it does'nt beam my way and my location is low down.

Looking at the GB3VHF website, there is a report from a user in Chippenham, which is further west than me, so I’m feeling confident! Will give it a go when I’m up at the Observatory next. 

[PhotoGav]

On 28/11/2020 at 19:30, wxsatuser said:

You could try GB3VHF on 144.430MHz, it's in Kent near Wrotham and one beam is aimed 288degs.
I would think it should be audible near you if you have reasonable site.

It is GPS locked so should be very stable and bang on frequency.
Tune USB to 144.429MHz and you can adjust the carrier to that frequency.
As well as a carrier/morse you may hear some JT65B signals.
Morse starts every odd minute past the hour for 13seconds and JT65B every even minute past the hour for 48secs.

Mike, thank you so much for this suggestion. I attempted to tune to the GB3VHF signal today and it appeared straight away, loud and clear! I tweaked the ppm setting to bring it to the 144.430MHz indicator in SDR# and the GRAVES pings are now appearing at 2000 Hz when the dongle is tuned to 143.048MHz. Here's a screen shot:

 

 

Next step is to get the aerial installed permanently outside, just waiting for an altitude adjustable mast bracket, which is arriving tomorrow. I should then be ready for the Geminids!

Thank you for your help.

Gav.