Packages Gr Satellites

gr-satellites

Decoders for the telemetry of hundreds of amateur satellites

• Version recorded: 5.5.0
• Categories: satellite-decoding, sdr-toolkits
• Upstream: https://github.com/daniestevez/gr-satellites
• Needs first: gnuradio

What it does

A GNU Radio out-of-tree module carrying decoders for a very large number of amateur and research satellites: the modulation, the framing, the forward error correction and the telemetry format for each, plus the generic building blocks -- AX.25, CCSDS, several FEC schemes -- to write a decoder for one it does not know.

Why you would want it

Receiving a satellite is easy and understanding it is not. Every spacecraft has its own framing and its own telemetry layout, and this is the accumulated work of decoding them. It turns a recording of a pass into battery voltages and temperatures, which is what makes satellite listening a hobby rather than a demonstration.

Before it will work

An SDR and an antenna suited to the band -- most amateur satellites are on VHF and UHF. Doppler correction, which means knowing when the pass is and tracking it; gpredict feeding a tuning offset is the usual arrangement.

How it installs

• apt: gr-satellites

Known problems

Satellites die, and a decoder for a spacecraft that has re-entered will never produce anything -- check the satellite is alive before debugging the decode chain. As an out-of-tree module it is compiled against a specific GNU Radio version, which matters on Mint 22.3 where GNU Radio is a minor release behind the other targets. Doppler shift on UHF is several kHz across a pass and an uncorrected receiver loses lock partway through.

Keeping it current

• probe: apt policy
• strategy: apt_upgrade

Where to get help with the software itself

Daniel Estevez, EA4GPZ. GitHub issues, and the documentation is genuinely good on the theory as well as the software.

Source: catalog/packages/gr-satellites.yaml