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Why SatMe
The satellite rises in ten minutes. Your phone already knows where, when, on which frequency — and it will remember the whole pass for you.
SatMe is made by a radio amateur who works satellites, for those who work them. Free software, no account, no ads, everything computed on the phone.
▶ Install SatMe from Google Play
Sunday, 4 October, 15:02. The ISS comes up in the west and sends school pictures in Robot 36. SatMe records the pass, decodes each picture as it arrives, and keeps them with the pass: four pictures, two minutes thirty-nine seconds apart, each one in its place on the trajectory.
A real pass, as kept by SatMe: the sky with the picture arriving, the four pictures of the pass, then the map with the ISS footprint over Europe.
Automatic SSTV even does it with the screen off: arm the ISS, put the phone down, find the pictures after the pass.
With an RTL-SDR dongle and a 137 MHz antenna, the METEOR-M2-3 / M2-4 weather pictures come in too, decoded on the phone (from 20.82, beta): METEOR pictures.
Every pass you follow goes into the pass journal: the trajectory really followed, the frequencies the rig was on, where the antennas pointed, the recording. Press Replay: the sound plays, the satellite moves, the SSTV picture is drawn line by line, a card says who each station is.
With an IC-9700 under CAT, the S-meter is kept too, and comes back on the replay as on the radio, with the frequency you were listening to in the passband:
RS-44, 6 October in the evening: S5 at 21:35, RX 435.6375 MHz — where the rig really was, Doppler taken off.
The moment you liked becomes a picture, a video with its sound, a GIF or a sound: a title with the satellite and the time, your callsign and your locator, the SatMe logo. Ready for the club, the forum or the ARISS gallery.
A whole pass also fits in one file — sound, pictures, bookmarks and, if you wish, its contacts — to keep it elsewhere or give it to another SatMe station, who will replay it as you lived it.
Plug the phone into the PC (or share the same Wi-Fi), open the address it shows: the pass journal replays large — the map with the footprint and the stations worked, the S-meter, the SSTV picture arriving, a timeline to click and drag to pick a whole QSO — and the SSTV sheet is laid out with the mouse. The phone makes the video, the GIF or the sheet; the PC downloads them. Nothing to install.
- Doppler on both sides, linear transponders and FM, the rig tuned before the satellite rises: IC-9700, TS-2000, TH-D72, FT-817, IC-705, an SDR dongle.
- Antennas: the phone's compass, a Bluetooth module on the boom, or a GS-232 / rotctld rotator that plans a pass over its end stop.
- Prepare the pass: nine lights check the station before AOS, each one leading to what fixes it.
- The log with one hand: a callsign keypad, the new locator flagged as you type, QRZ.com, Wavelog / Cloudlog sent by itself.
- APRS through the ISS: SatMe cheers when the ISS repeats your frame, and tells who else was on the pass.
- No account, no ads, no tracking: SatMe sends no identifier and no callsign of its own accord — only what you send yourself (your online log, an AMSAT report).
- Predictions computed on the phone, working offline.
- Free software (GPL), in French and English, readable by screen readers.
▶ Install SatMe from Google Play
then Getting started: your station, your satellites, and the next pass.
73 de F4IOZ