I have a VHF/UHF antenna pair on a rotator in support of my HAM hobby. When I am not using it myself, I make it available to SatNOGS.
As many observations are scheduled automatically and almost non-stop, whenever I want to use my antenna pair for it’s regular purpose I am interrupting scheduled observations which are then vetted as bad or as fail depending on if I take the RPi off-line or just detach the antennas.
I would like to know how, as a station owner, I can block time on my station in advance for a couple of hours or perhaps a whole week-end, where it will not be available to SatNOGS, to avoid people scheduling observations being disappointed, or people having to vet obserations that are not performed.
If not possible today, this may be considered as a future feature. In which case I would like to know the best operating practice for now (take the RPi off-line, or just detach the antennas?)
It presently is not possible to block a particular future time range. This is useful functionality and certainly warrants raising an issue on satnogs-network. Feel free to raise one at Issues · librespacefoundation / SatNOGS / satnogs-network · GitLab, or let us know to raise one on your behalf.
You can put a message in your station description for people that schedule observations on your station, though they may not always read those.
The best approach is to stop the satnogs-client on the RPi. This will mean the observations are not performed. Ideally the scheduled observations planned for that period should be removed, but can otherwise be marked as failed later.
I have asked this question before. There is no answer. They want 100% utilization. I would put my station in testing mode so that I can use it for my experimentation such as running it as a TCP server and connecting to it with another program like Gqrx or SDR# Just remember to put it back on line when you are done.
Works for me.
73 Bov vk2byf
This means: 100% of the time the owner is willing to provide for SatNOGS! As you can see in the configuration page there already is a field for “Maximum utilization”, but this still needs work! Your explanation sounds a bit annoyed…maybe you can contribute to this and make the progress grow faster!?
I’m not annoyed and if you check my stations 568 and 724 have been running 24/7 for quite a while and making a contribution. I have worked out most of the time when someone else has booked a timeslot I was interested in, I simply use their observation. I’m not a programme so I can’t contribute in that area. Hardware is my area of expertise.
Bob vk2byf
Yeah, understood your point on programming. Maybe open issues so you can get your suggestions bound to the code!?
If you need help with raising them: feel free to ping me, always happy to help!
