Greetings from Nigel (ZS6RN) in South Africa - Grid square KG43eu
Simple question: Before embarking on establishing a SatNogs station I need to establish if uploading of observation data (preferably EXCLUDING audio content) can be scheduled on a daily basis i.e. between 00:01 ~ 05:59?
Reason for question is that I do NOT have unlimited (using a PAYG GSM service) bandwidth plus data is VERY expensive. I am prepared to add a ‘night owl’ subscription to my account which offers limited data at a low cost but unless the SatNogs client can be configured to schedule sending of observations, then this option (adding night owl subscription) would not be viable.
I have undertaken a simple search of the forum archives but alas not found an answer to my question, hence this submission.
This is definitely not possible right now. I’m not even sure you can stop uploading of audio content.
I guess SatNOGS wasn’t really designed to be run on such limited connections
Many thanks for feedback, even if NOT positive Guessing the developers will need to change ‘roadmap’ in order to add low bandwidth functionality…
Disappointed that those overseeing the application development assume that everyone has unlimited and low cost access to the Internet… Perhaps its not important to have SatNog stations in parts of the world where access to affordable data is a given (other than for those who can afford to pay the price…).
@ZS6RN, indeed as @vk5qi said, SatNOGS Client and Network were initially designed without having in mind low bandwidth and/or limited connection. We have done some steps to this direction but not enough to currently support such a situation.
There are opened issues related with your request, like disabling audio upload or having a way to schedule when the ground station is available, but due to limited development resources haven’t been implemented yet. As always we would be happy to review and accept merge requests that implement these features and we are open to any other ideas/implementations that would help build stations that have low bandwidth or limited connection.
All points noted and unfortunately (for the project) I do not have programming skills to be able to make a contribution - my interest is (was) being able to capture telemetry.
I have been ‘playing’ with working the ‘easy sats’ (FM) and next on my to-do list is repurposing of a Meade GoTo telescope mount for tracking as currently a limitation using a hand held Yagi. Once automated tracking working, next stop on my road-map will be working the SSB birds and once I have ticked that box my thinking is that a longer term satellite activity will be the capture and analysis of telemetry - hence my interest in joining the SatNogs community.
Good luck with the project, stay SAFE and as always, remember to KEEP SMILING!
@ZS6RN I was thinking that you can try some other solutions like gr-satellites or GetKISS+ that will allow you to decode/demodulate satellites and send only some frames in SatNOGS DB. These are definitely lighter solutions for low bandwidth connections.
Guessing the developers will need to change ‘roadmap’ in order to add low bandwidth functionality…