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6. Radiosondes

JJX edited this page Dec 22, 2024 · 1 revision

Radiosondes are weather observation balloons used by scientists, weather agencies and military to collect data about wind, temperature, humidity, ozone and so on in the different layers of our atmosphere. If you follow the steps in this chapter of the tutorial you will be able to receive data from Radiosondes and feed it to the big map.

Hardware preparation

You need to change the id / serial number of the SDR stick you want to use for radiosondes, to distinguish it reliably from the other rtl-sdr sticks. You do not want to mix it up after a reboot, it will result in not working radiosondes.

Plug your SDR stick in a PC with no other RTL-SDR stick connected. This can be your Raspberry Pi or every other Linux computer with the rtl-sdr library installed.

Set the new serial with

sudo rtl_eeprom -s 30000001

For your first stick. If you use more than one stick for Radiosondes increase the serial +1 for each new stick like 30000002, 30000003, ... You need to reconnect your stick or reboot your system sto access your stick with the new serial. Beware that smaller numbers like 2 do not work.

Software installation

If you didn't already, add our package repository first, as shown in the Install Chapter

Install auto_rx

sudo apt install radiosondeautorx

Configure auto_rx

Edit /etc/default/radiosondeautorx and change at least the following parameters:

  • sdr_quantity
  • device_idx
  • max_freq

There are lots of other options, please have a look at the official auto_rx wiki

Restart service

sudo systemctl restart radiosondeautorx

Start feeding

Now you may proceed with installing our feeding package, if you didn't already. Or you may install another service, e.g. ADS-B and/or AIS.

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