HADESx Decoder 1.2.0: HADES-SA pictures

HADESx Decoder 1.2.0: HADES-SA pictures

New: image packets (SSDV) from HADES-SA are decoded off the air. From one real pass (5 October 2026) the decoder recovers 29 packets of the satellite's internal picture (320 x 240), each checked by its own CRC-32 and, if damaged, repaired with the packets' Reed-Solomon code. The new command hadesx-ssdv puts the packets of an image together into the .ssdv file and the JPEG, the way AMSAT-EA's run_ssdv.bat does (it needs Philip Heron's ssdv program for the JPEG). The packets are sent without the scrambler.

Fixed: a bit-clock problem. The symbol clock used to drift by up to 3 % on unscrambled data (image packets, PN9), so frames came out misaligned a few bits after the sync word even though the signal was strong. The clock is now reset at the start of every burst and learned from the training pattern. The same HADES-SA recording goes from 12 to 43 valid frames; HADES-L (39 frames) and UNNE-1B (45 frames) are unchanged; --fs guess is more reliable.

Also new: docs/installing.md, a step-by-step installation guide (virtual environment, regular install without pip, single file), and examples/iq/hades_sa_ssdv_pass.wav, a 21 s excerpt of the pass with five image packets.

Update: git pull (or download the zip). Install: see the README. hadesx_standalone.py is the single-file decoder (it does not include hadesx-report and hadesx-ssdv).

Recording of the HADES-SA pass: N6RFM. Packet formats and the Windows tool: AMSAT-EA. The HADES-SA SSDV picture format is Philip Heron's SSDV (github.com/fsphil/ssdv).