Observation uploads successfully but only ~12 seconds of audio available on Network

SatNOGS Software
1

Regarding Observation 14174767 …

I’m running a SatNOGS station on a Raspberry Pi using Docker (SatNOGS Client 2.1.2 with Hamlib containers).

I noticed something unusual with one of my recent observations: the observation completed successfully, artifacts and waterfall were uploaded without errors, but on the SatNOGS Network only around 12 seconds of payload/audio seem to be available, while the scheduled observation duration was much longer.

From the client logs I can see:

  • Observation starts normally

  • Doppler tracking through rigctld works

  • Waterfall upload is successful

  • Payload (.ogg) upload is also reported as successful

  • Post-observation script runs successfully

Example log lines:

  • “Artifacts upload for observation successful”

  • “Upload of waterfall image successful”

  • “PUT file satnogs_xxxxx.ogg to network API”

Inside the container, /tmp/.satnogs/data/ is cleaned after upload, so I could not inspect the recorded OGG afterward.

For this specific observation, gr_satellites also reports:

“Satellite 66657 not found”

I understand that this means the satellite is not yet available in gr-satellites definitions, but I’m not sure whether that could also explain why only a short part of the recording appears on the Network.

My questions:

  1. Does “Satellite XXXX not found” affect the uploaded audio recording length, or only decoding?

  2. If waterfall and payload upload both return success, what could cause only ~12 seconds to appear on the observation page?

  3. Is there a recommended way to keep observation files locally when running via Docker for debugging?

Thank you very much for your help

2

Dear YD7OTZ,

gr-satellites doesn’t effect the ogg creation, it is a separate process that makes use of a udp port provided by the satnogs client.

There is no Yaml file yet for satellite 66657, all current Yaml files can be found at this location and that doesn’t mean they are already updated into the satnogs docker image.

Jan | PE0SAT

3

Check this similar case: Observation 8626660: HADES-D (98981)

In satnogs-setup, in advanced setting under the submenu Paths you can set the variable SATNOGS_COMPLETE_OUTPUT_PATH more details about it in User guide — SatNOGS Client 2.1.1 documentation. With this setting the uploaded files will be copied to the set path.

To be honest I’m not 100% sure how and if this will work with the docker containers installation, I guess setting a path under the /tmp would work, maybe @Acinonyx is more familiar and can give some more info.

4

Yes, while it should be possible to set the output path to /tmp, it is not possible to pull the file out of /tmp with docker cp for instance, because this is a tmpfs.