Install the satnogs_gr-satellites "addon" and use your station more!

SatNOGS Software
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Hi all station operators!
I can recommend the satnogs_gr-satellites “add-on” from @SA2KNG to be able to decode even more satellites with your SatNOGS station.
The installation is very simple, even for a non-Linux person like myself.

//Lars SM0TGU
https://network.satnogs.org/stations/858/

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After updating my station to the latest build and installing satnogs_gr-satellites, I now see demodulated data for NAYIF-1! https://network.satnogs.org/observations/4231963/

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@graems Great! I hope more station owners will follow.
/Lars

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I tried to install the addon. When I try “gr_satellites --version” I get the following messages back:

pi@satnogs:~ $ gr_satellites --version
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “/usr/local/bin/gr_satellites”, line 16, in
import satellites.core
File “/usr/local/lib/python3/dist-packages/satellites/init.py”, line 49, in
from .adsb_kml import adsb_kml
File “/usr/local/lib/python3/dist-packages/satellites/adsb_kml.py”, line 15, in
from .telemetry import gomx_3 as tlm
File “/usr/local/lib/python3/dist-packages/satellites/telemetry/init.py”, line 19, in
import construct
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named ‘construct’
pi@satnogs:~ $

I did this course:

If you get the error: ModuleNotFoundError: No module named ‘satellites’
You can add this to ~/.bashrc : export PYTHONPATH=/usr/local/lib/python3/dist-packages/

This is the output of echo $PATH:

/home/pi/.local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/local/games:/usr/games

I have a log file of the complete installation process for the one who is able to figure out what’s going on here.

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Sorry but I do not know what the problem can be. Maybe @SA2KNG can help?
/Lars

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Hi,

Looks like the installation of python module construct is not working, or not installed.
Follow the instruction on Installing from source — gr-satellites 5.6.0-git documentation

pip3 install --user --upgrade construct requests

There’s also a possibility to install it from the distribution package, but will depend heavily on what dist you’re using. In debian it’s called python3-construct and can be installed with:

sudo apt-get install python3-construct

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I’m sure I checked whether construct is installed or not. But it was not installed.
gr_satellites --version is working now.

Thanks!

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I’m using the Satnogs Raspberry Pi image, which only has Gnuradio 3.7. gr_satellites requires Gnuradio 3.8+. I tried installing the Gnuradio repository (sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gnuradio/gnuradio-releases) but got “Error: could not find a distribution template for Raspbian/buster”. https://wiki.gnuradio.org/index.php/InstallingGR#Raspberry_Pi suggests installing Gnuradio from source. Is that what you did, or is there a better way to get gr_satellites running?

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A big thanks to https://community.libre.space/u/sa2kng!

This is the 1st observation with gr_satellites on my satnogs stn: https://network.satnogs.org/observations/4265966/

Very nice! 73, DL8LAQ

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My satnogs client version is 1.5.1 and I just followed this installation procedure https://github.com/kng/satnogs_gr-satellites/blob/main/INSTALL.md

That’s all I did to get gr_satellites running!

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Thanks. That’s the guide I used as well, but cmake .. resulted in

By not providing "FindGnuradio.cmake" in CMAKE_MODULE_PATH this project has
asked CMake to find a package configuration file provided by "Gnuradio",
but CMake did not find one.

which lead me down the path of trying to get a more recent version of gnuradio.

But just now I tried clearing the build directory and running cmake again. This time it was successful. I don’t know what has changed, but something of all the stuff I tried the last day seems to have fixed it. Currently running make which will take a while. I’ll report back.

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Everything seems to be working now.

The script overwrote my existing post observation script but after editing /usr/local/bin/satnogs-post to call my script as well as the gr-satellites script, everything seems to be in order. gr-satellites logs the following:

gr-satellites: Observation: 4269435, Norad: 43743, Name: REAKTOR_HELLO_WORLD, Script: satnogs_reaktor_hello_world_fsk9600_decoder.py
gr-satellites: Starting observation 4269435
gr-satellites: running at 57600 sps
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Also for me it works fine. Only had to replace some spaces with tabs in a Makefile. But it shows a suggestion.

Observation:
https://network.satnogs.org/observations/4271692/

Thanks people for the hard work! :smiley:

Best regards Eelke.

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I forgot to mention this too!

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Me too :smiley: I used sed -i Makefile -e 's/ /\t/g' (8 spaces between the first and second /)

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For those with UHF-only ground stations (like me!), satnogs_gr_satellites does not currently include active UHF satellites although this will probably change in the future.

SELECTED="39444 44830 43803 42017 44832 40074"

These two inactive UHF satellites were recycled by the Earth’s upper atmosphere:

ALT-1 44830 on 437.175 Mhz (successful atmospheric re-entry Oct 2020)
SMOG-P 44832 on 437.175 Mhz (successful atmospheric re-entry late Sept 2020)

Time to rebuild my VHF QFH :grinning:

And thanks for the tips on the makefile!

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You can edit the SELECTED parameter and add (or remove) the satellites you would like to process with satnogs_gr_satellites.
/Lars

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Thanks, Lars. My understanding is limited for this software.

Was satnogs_gr_satellites meant to be an alternative way of decoding frames (IQ stream → UDP)? That is, can this add-on be used to decode all the satellites that satnogs-client already decode but uses a different flowgraph? Or is it meant to fill the gap of satellites that the satnogs-client (v1.4x or v1.5.x) cannot currently decode?

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I think better @SA2KNG answer that question. I just happy for this super add-on and all the work that has been done.
/L

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Agreed, thanks to the SatNOGS community for this and all that is contributed!

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