clistones

A CLI application to register meteor echoes produced by the french radar system GRAVES

Requirements

• sigutils (http://github.com/BatchDrake/sigutils) Note: you will need the most recent version of the develop branch
• alsa (you need to install libasound2-dev in Debian-based systems)
• CMake 3.11 or newer (although it may work with older versions)

Building the program

Clone the repo and cd to the main directory. Then run:

% mkdir build
% cd build
% cmake ..
% make

Optionally, you may run sudo make install to install it system-wide.

Help! I'm getting thousands of build errors!

If after running make you see errors like these:

(metalloid) % make 
Scanning dependencies of target clistones 
[ 33%] Building C object CMakeFiles/clistones.dir/src/graves.c.o 
[ 66%] Building C object CMakeFiles/clistones.dir/src/main.c.o 
In file included from /home/waldo/Documents/Desarrollo/clistones/include/graves.h:28,
                 from /home/waldo/Documents/Desarrollo/clistones/src/graves.c:29:
/usr/local/include/sigutils/sigutils/log.h:74:4: error: #error __FILENAME__ not defined. Please verify your build system.
   74 | #  error __FILENAME__ not defined. Please verify your build system.
      |    ^~~~~
In file included from /home/waldo/Documents/Desarrollo/clistones/src/graves.c:29:
/home/waldo/Documents/Desarrollo/clistones/include/graves.h:115:3: error: unknown type name ‘grow_buf_t’
  115 |   grow_buf_t chirp;
      |   ^~~~~~~~~~

...

This means that you are compiling against a very old version of sigutils, probably because you have cloned the master branch and built from there. You need to build the develop branch, which can be cloned by running:

% git clone --branch develop https://github.com/BatchDrake/sigutils.git

Running the program

Just plug your radio to the line-in of your computer, tune it to 143.049 kHz USB (or 143.051 kHz LSB, although this will reverse the sign of the Doppler) and then run ./clistones (or clistones if you installed it system-wide). You should see a text line for every echo detected by the program.

I don't have a radio (yet), how do I test it?

If you have PulseAudio, simply run clistones as described in the previous step and run pavucontrol. In the Recording tab, identify the entry for ALSA plug-in [clistones] and click the button on the right to set the recording device to Monitor of internal audio (or something alike). Then, go to YouTube and open this video. Make sure you are listening to it as well. This setup will simulate an actual capture with echoes recorded during the Perseids meteor shower of 2016.