Hacking Portable Satellite Dish For More Space Experiments

Рет қаралды 222,154

4 ай бұрын

This was a project to modify a Winegard Carryout satellite antenna into a microwave imager and miniature radio telescope. It's similar to my prior project with a Dish Tailgater antenna ( • Seeing Satellites with... )
I used a string of serial cable adapters to get a console on the Carryout dish brain, then I could control it with a Python program. The dish moves through a specified angle and elevation range and takes a signal reading at each position. These can be combined into an image of the sky where each pixel is a radio signal. Then you can "see" things like satellites and radiation patterns.
The prior version only used the onboard Ku-band receiver on the dish. This version replaces the LNB with an RTL-SDR (Software-defined radio) and L-band antenna. Other radio bands could be used, but microwave probably works the best.
I'd like to turn this into a Wifi imager eventually. I did some brief experiments with Wifi (S-band) using a downconverter, but I didn't get very far with that.
My best images so far include an Inmarsat geostationary satellite, navigation satellites, and Iridium comm satellites. All of these can be "imaged" with the dish, although they appear a little different due to the relative speed of the dish and the satellite! For example, Iridium showed up as one long streak (kind of like a time exposure picture). GPS / Gallileo / Beidou showed up as many small points on an orbital track. Inmarsat showed up as fixed a point source in the sky.
I have a writeup on my website with more information about this project here: saveitforparts.wordpress.com/...
My code is available on Github here: github.com/saveitforparts/Car...
You will need an RS-232 to RS-485 adapter. I used this one:
www.amazon.com/dp/B01CXY9S6M?...
Used satellite antennas like this often show up on Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, and other used sites. They're worth about $25-$50USD. Sometimes people ask more, but I just wait until they go unsold for a month and the price drops, or wait for someone else to list one cheaper.
Saveitforparts t-shirts and other merch at saveitforparts.myspreadshop.com/
Join this channel to get access to perks:
/ @saveitforparts
Or support me via Patreon at / saveitforparts
Check out gadgets and devices I like at www.amazon.com/shop/saveitfor...

Пікірлер: 587

@flanfre_skarlett 4 ай бұрын

"Just one more satelite dish bros... I promise its the last one. Just one more. One more satelite dish.. just one more. I only need one more.."

@ericlotze7724 3 ай бұрын

I mean the more you have, the higher resolution for “The Very Small Array”, no?

@flanfre_skarlett 3 ай бұрын

@@ericlotze7724 Just one more satelite dish...

@flanfre_skarlett Ай бұрын

@@ericlotze7724 "Just one more dish..."

@nathansmith1085 4 ай бұрын

I don't have the slightest clue what you are doing, but i really enjoy watching you do whatever it is your doing.

@khalidrayin78 2 ай бұрын

Me to 😊

@zerodoinkthirty9610 4 ай бұрын

We love recreational python coding

@capichow 4 ай бұрын

I turned a robot head on mars with python 🐍 Strangely was able to download gear files from limewire 😂❤❤❤🥹

@capichow 4 ай бұрын

Remember that that movie where the guy wanted to come back to earth from mars And he came across a Russia ship with a bear 🐻 in the program 😂 The way it spoke And the American put python on it I think ? It was a great movie

@capichow 4 ай бұрын

Yes I moved a robot 🤖 head on mars with python 🐍

@capichow 4 ай бұрын

KZfaq commands helped 😆

@OmPuter 4 ай бұрын

me too.. literally

@tekvax01 4 ай бұрын

HAL usually refers to the Hardware Abstraction Layer... but hey... the HAL9000 has the utmost enthusiasm for the mission, so that works too!

@HansWeberHimself 4 ай бұрын

Hal was a reference to IBM, just one letter up in the alphabet. H-I, A-B, L-M.

@Azazeal777 3 ай бұрын

you called

@HansWeberHimself 3 ай бұрын

@@Azazeal777 nice!

@charlessansom4849 4 ай бұрын

He’s got a lot more patience than I do. He keeps saying this annoying problem, that annoying problem, yet shows not a hint of annoyance. I would have already been throwing things around, getting mad, cussing. Kudos to you sir!

@WayneMetcalf 4 ай бұрын

You could use a rotary encoder to show the exact position of the dish and use that as error correction.

@4muhammedsiraaji71 4 ай бұрын

Hey.. I have a challenge could you be having a solution to it and help me out. I want to learn how to hack pay tv and watch channels free of charge

@HobkinBoi 4 ай бұрын

@@4muhammedsiraaji71 Most modern satellite tv is encrypted and most people don't have that kind of tech or skill to be able to crack it.

@rickb06 4 ай бұрын

@@4muhammedsiraaji71if it was back in the 90s, that'd be easy, but it's 2024 unfortunately and doing that is all but impossible, unless you are using one of the very precious few remaining analog coax services.

@ML-dk7bf 4 ай бұрын

Sorry buddy, ever since DTV / DISH went digital, they have encoded their transmissions, and all the boxes are designed to take sat encryption updates. The good old days of paying a DTV technician under the table for a decoder are gone. Besides the'res nothing good on TV anyway. @@4muhammedsiraaji71

@parknich081 4 ай бұрын

@@4muhammedsiraaji71skull

@coreyrobinson9010 4 ай бұрын

The panic of plugging in a serial port into a moving assembly is... fun :) Another phenomenal video!

@BrandEver117 4 ай бұрын

I like the filming of the screen, it fits the vibe of the channel better lol

@ipaqmaster 4 ай бұрын

Easily one of the coolest channels I've ever come across. I love the scripting too.

@fuhkoffandie 4 ай бұрын

❤me too. Awesome channel!

@rubenskiii 4 ай бұрын

I don't understand half of what he's doing but it's the professionaly winging it that has me hooked.

@rubenskiii 4 ай бұрын

Also: what was the cencored.png?👀

@saveitforparts 4 ай бұрын

Ha, it's an overlay for editing, in case I have something too dumb or sketchy. Mostly a joke, I forget when I last used it.

@user-ul3ws7yc2g 4 ай бұрын

Fun fact about those Prolific serial adapters, it's not that they're necessarily flaky, it's that the market is riddled with counterfeits. It's entirely possible you have one and the genuine article might work better. If you look up "computers are bad - prolific counterfeits" there's a really interesting read about them. It's actually pretty crazy the lengths that Prolific has gone to in order to defeat counterfeiters, so much so that they screw over legitimate customers.

@mastertravelerseenitall298 4 ай бұрын

FTDI serial adapters are counterfeited too. The DRM installed can be hateful...

@zerobow9413 4 ай бұрын

you can test it with a loopback at various speeds

@adamweb 4 ай бұрын

Was the serial port on the Linux server possibly just disabled in the BIOS? I love the huge range of tech and scripting you cover on this channel BTW!

@saveitforparts 4 ай бұрын

Could be, I never checked that!

@christophergummer 4 ай бұрын

This was my first thought

@patchvonbraun 4 ай бұрын

Your cheesy telephone cable may be the culprit. Higher bit-rates require better cables -- even for these "glacial by todays network standards" speeds. Back when I was a young pup, we ran RS-232 everywhere -- because you had terminals and a central computer. Getting things to work above 9600BPS required better cabling--particularly for longer cabling.

@nickldominator 4 ай бұрын

You aren't grinding any gears, the grinding noise you are hearing is just the stepper motors losing steps. This is actually a pretty common way for motion control systems w/o feedback sensors to find 'home'. The stepper motors will skip steps at torque levels far below the point where it would cause damage to belts or gears, making it a cost effective (although scary sounding) way to home a system. Some/older 3D (and 2D) printers do this, as do CD/DVD drive readers, some flatbed scanners, etc. If you are losing steps/position while the unit is operating, that is likely a result of moving the system too fast. Stepper motors have a torque curve, and at high speeds they have a high chance of skipping.

@chrisjacobsen1659 4 ай бұрын

I agree, it sounds terrible, but there is actually no physical contact being made. Just a vibration of the shaft/motor through the magnetic fields.

@PolarisC8 4 ай бұрын

Well now that I know it can be done, I simply must make a radio telescope!

@ProfessorBidoof 4 ай бұрын

there is a gigantic base of people that love breaking down this low level especially satellite stuff. we can donate things to you. or at least i can.

@saveitforparts 4 ай бұрын

What kinda stuff? I'm looking to donate a couple broken VuQube dishes to someone myself, just to free up garage space 😅

@ProfessorBidoof 4 ай бұрын

@@saveitforparts is there a discord or something we can share info?

@kb9mtd-aaronwebb 4 ай бұрын

I'd love to get my hands on one of these that I can hack up! I might need to source locally though.

@ProfessorBidoof 4 ай бұрын

@@kb9mtd-aaronwebb if in USA u can have some

@saveitforparts 4 ай бұрын

I haven't had time to sign up for Discord, too distracted with all the other chat apps! Email is probably the easiest, gabe (at) saveitforparts (dot com).

@cliftonmassey3143 4 ай бұрын

When it's starting and grinding the gears, I think it's doing that because the current limit feed back is set to high. If their is any adjustability for it, adjusting it down may stop the over torquing issue.

@aspergerio 3 ай бұрын

I think it's as simple as the whole waveguide is just the wrong size for L-band. Fascinating experiment, mate. Thanks for the great content.

@robina.jensen6114 4 ай бұрын

Maybe one of the dipswitches will turn off that self calibration / setellite search mode. If it needs maintainance or some work inside after commissioning, it would be logical for the operator to turn off the feature before powering it up.

@josevalentinantoniorestrep3854 4 ай бұрын

The programmer interface Is JTAG. Used in FPGA and ARM processors

@kyoteecasey 4 ай бұрын

Amazing work for a backyard enthusiast! Love watching your projects develop. Love from NZ

@rareimpalass1966 4 ай бұрын

I really enjoy your videos! Your determination is inspiring!

@NoblePineapples 4 ай бұрын

Hands down one of my favourite channels.

@daveys 4 ай бұрын

14:40 - I’d suggest marking the hard limits and from those, find the midpoint. Then use that midpoint for your initial aim. Really interesting project, always useful to have a real world problem to get your teeth into. Good to see your code too, gives an idea of how you’re moving the dish. I’m not as good with Python as you are but I’m getting better.

@saveitforparts 4 ай бұрын

I'm not great at Python either, and I'm sure there are cleaner and more elegant ways of doing most of these routines. Hopefully no one's using my code as a learning example 😅

@daveys 4 ай бұрын

@@saveitforparts - It only matters if you’re working as part of a larger team, which you aren’t. Any decent coder can read your code - even I know what you’re doing line by line.

@alectrosic5805 4 ай бұрын

i really am mind blown on how you can figure out how to do things like this, if a satellite was put in front of me and i had to make something of it i would be lost!! I really do enjoy watching your content although most of it i dont understand, but it does not matter!

@tenkaraanarchist243 4 ай бұрын

I hereby declare you the actual coolest person on KZfaq.

@adamdaniels8554 4 ай бұрын

Don't give up, this is one of the most interesting things I've seen in a while!

@patchvonbraun 4 ай бұрын

The L-band patch behind what amounts to a chunk of circular-waveguide will NOT work very well at all. The feedpoint "plumbing" on these dishes is also quite specialized to a particular range of wavelengths -- in the case of these Tailgater type dishes, that's Ku-band, at 11-12GHz, as opposed to the 1.5GHz you're trying for. I'd get stick with the original LNB, and tap into the RF goop at some appropriate point. The card appears to have a multi-output power supply--one of those outputs will be supplying 11-15V for the LNB.

@ferrumignis 4 ай бұрын

The horrible noise when it hits the limits may not be destructive, it's probably just the stepper skipping steps which shouldn't cause any damage. If the belt is skipping them it probably needs to be tensioned more.

@peterfairlie2296 4 ай бұрын

Great how you back engineered it. Loved the "Cat Scanner" Your Cat loves helping you out all of the time.

@RafaelAcurcio 4 ай бұрын

Man it's beautiful to see how excited while working with this. Keep it up! :)

@ransomxvi 4 ай бұрын

Fantastic. Such a great video. Watched the desert trip series with my bro. Great content. Got him interested in the sky!

@mllarson 4 ай бұрын

I was surprised when it rained here around Christmas too (I'm in central MN). At least it snowed recently so it seems more like winter.

@elesjuan 4 ай бұрын

I like the longer video personally, even if the end result isn't considered a "success." Generally not really into radio telescopes persay, but anything RF is generally an interest of mine. These little dishes are really pretty neat honestly.

@thisismyname1920 4 ай бұрын

Dude, your channel and content is the absolute coolest. Greetings from the Twin Cities!

@christophercallinan 3 ай бұрын

dude i love your projects , please keep the videos coming!!!!

@fonteeee 4 ай бұрын

I love these videos so much. You are a blessing to us all!

@steveslater7885 4 ай бұрын

So Cool! -- Love that you got some great images out of it.

@Abdul_JaculBuratsadorSalsalani 3 ай бұрын

I love KZfaq videos like these... really feeds my Layman's curiosity.😊

@beefchicken 4 ай бұрын

Add a Arduino controlled oscillator that squirts a little bit of RF in your target band at the end of every scan to give an in-band sync pulse!

@matthewwagner47 3 ай бұрын

Amazing how you can see the background from the fence and other objects.

@onlyinthe707 4 ай бұрын

great effort my man! wish I had someone like you in my area to do sat projects like this with

@riddler2kone 4 ай бұрын

Love your videos. Because of you i bought a RTL-SDR 😀 I would recommend putting a raspberry there and trash the original controller. Those stepper can be better controlled directly. With this setup you also can add switch-endstops.

@danheffernan5666 4 ай бұрын

This looks so cool ! Makes me want to get into whatever this is.

@mattstosh6960 4 ай бұрын

The Milk Crate Pedestal Mount is the Best.... True DIY at Heart. Very Fun - Very Informative. Good for you...

@NunyaBidnis-jk2kt 4 ай бұрын

First time viewing your stuff. I liked and subscribed not only because it's interesting, but because of your StarGate SG1 dvds

@kekons23 4 ай бұрын

love your content, i would love to see a video about the basic tools and software you need to start hacking like this

@saveitforparts 4 ай бұрын

Damned if I know, I bought a $15 Software Defined Radio in 2020 and it just snowballed from there😅

@SunTzu2024 3 ай бұрын

i have not one clue what you are talking about. but i love it. i always get hooked on your videos

@keithlambell1970 4 ай бұрын

Really interesting experiments, thanks

@MoosesValley 3 ай бұрын

10:38 "That still sounds terrible to me, there there has to be a better way to know the drive limit than just slamming into it and grinding the gears like that" - I liked it ! It reminded me of the grunts and grinds sounds coming out an old Apple ][ floppy disk drive.

@charlesurrea1451 4 ай бұрын

You need to explore the world in circuit debuggers! ICDs are a lot of fun, you don't necessarily have to know programming language. A lot of it is very similar to what you've been doing elsewhere.

@__Dallas 4 ай бұрын

Great as always! Still blown away by the amount of these readily available in your area. I'm debating checking the listings out east and just pay the shipping to snag one. I'd really like to see a raspberry pi integration. My idea would be to track the ISS ham repeater using the live/estimated data available in many apps or other web services. I'm sure there are many other pan/tilt devices that would be better suited to support the antenna required for two way contact but a quick and dirty "listen only" antenna may be doable in that package using the protected cover as well. An automated setup triggered by viable passes would be the ultimate goal! Keep tinkering!

@Prateek1234q. 4 ай бұрын

I am in love with your videos ❤

@fuhkoffandie 4 ай бұрын

Hey I'm an instant subscriber this guy's content is in my wheelhouse.....love it.😊 I don't know how I went this long without knowing about this channel.... at last you've arrived😂

@michaellichter4091 4 ай бұрын

I find your satellite projects very interesting. It's nice that the cat has made a valuable contribution to the project. I hope you find a solution to the problem. I love Python; it's a very powerful language. I use it on the Raspberry Pi Nano.

@G7LWT 4 ай бұрын

Fascinating - great work - thanks for sharing!

@nekomakhea9440 4 ай бұрын

before long he'll have enough RV dishes to build his own very large sparse array radio telescope

@saveitforparts 4 ай бұрын

I tried building a "Very Small Array" but couldn't get stuff to sync right.

@401ksolar 4 ай бұрын

@@saveitforparts may want to look into the "wisper" wspr mode radio clock sync tech for such a task? Also a very fast/wide network switch synced helps.

@pairashootpants5373 4 ай бұрын

Amazing work! Very inspiring!

@OnixMox 4 ай бұрын

I have no idea what was happening here, but I enjoyed it immensely...

@AliBaba-od1dz 4 ай бұрын

Nice work . 👏 . Keep it up and keep digging you'll get there .

@ransomxvi 4 ай бұрын

Such a huge video. Thank you so much! Take a rest bro. You deserve it.

@Xerdar36 4 ай бұрын

That thumbnail… looks like a modified birdbath from the year 2100…

@josevalentinantoniorestrep3854 4 ай бұрын

HAL means hardware abstraction layer... and is like a kernel on a system

@saveitforparts 4 ай бұрын

It keeps telling me it's sorry, but it can't open the pod bay doors 😢

@TheChefmike66 4 ай бұрын

I don't understand everything, but I understand enough to be fascinated. Thank you!

@vitezslavruzicka6224 4 ай бұрын

wow, amazing video. I admire your efforts

@dfkjbdfondfngg 4 ай бұрын

Always a delight to watch :)

@Bobbias 4 ай бұрын

Your bodge of usb to serial to rs485 to rj11 breakout is both glorious and also likely to be a source of headaches. Usb to serial adapters are incredibly fickle, and can be huge sources of headaches. I spent a while working with PLCs which were typically programmed over serial (or rs485, sometimes even rs485 through an rj11 jack like you've got) and the problem was invariably that the PLC hated the usb to serial adapter.

@jizmoglass4202 4 ай бұрын

Love your channel dude bro. from Faribault. Chaeers.

@TheThostus 4 ай бұрын

I love that you use an engineering notebook for note taking. I thought I was one of the only ones.

@TheGmr140 4 ай бұрын

Nice video, and great project 😊😊

@LeeZhiWei8219 4 ай бұрын

This is so awesome stuff!

@steampog 4 ай бұрын

Awesome work sir

@jacobsteele2929 4 ай бұрын

🤙So cool, fascinating! The Frankenstein interface cable is great... Halenstein lol

@shindizzel5154 4 ай бұрын

i love these videos so much!!!

@theonewhowas7709 4 ай бұрын

thats cool as hell man... keep it up

@klulnes 4 ай бұрын

there is no satellites that i know of..in my office... you are hillarious.greets from Lithuania. love your channel. kep digging

@shadabmozaffar2996 3 ай бұрын

At 2:14 it is JTAG interface which can help debugging and dumping/writing flash memory.

@keen4e 3 ай бұрын

i always find the most interesting videos when i am about to sleep, so i leave this tactical dot .

@mrchrisaryner 2 ай бұрын

The Winegard Company is in my hometown of Burlington Iowa.

@cookingmailman6086 4 ай бұрын

and another good vid! keep them coming!

@Dimondcore1327 4 ай бұрын

love this channel

@manuellujan666 4 ай бұрын

I know nothing about any of this but it's always fascinated me so I searched KZfaq and here we are 😂

@MRMAGNETOHACKER 4 ай бұрын

Amazing sir great project 👍👍👍👍

@TimHollingworth 4 ай бұрын

Wow this is way beyond my DIY skills, but also very interesting.

@ManMountainMetals 4 ай бұрын

The sidekick in every apocalypse movie 🎬 that does the science-y stuff.

@BariumCobaltNitrog3n 4 ай бұрын

I believe that rain pan is the rain cover for a roof exhaust fan. I have one just like it. IBM did consulting for HAL (Heuristically Programmed Algorithmic Computer) 9000.

@user-yi1sx3pr5q 2 ай бұрын

Dude adafruit motor controller for the pi zero will control 2 steppers and you can add limit switches thats how i refited mine. I love your channel!

@alphaadhito 4 ай бұрын

I always wonder if the dish is big enough for HRPT receiving, the signal would be a lot stronger than GOES satellites. That way you can made an automated NOAA/METEOR/METOP HRPT receiver that is weatherproof :)

@Scotch42 3 ай бұрын

You have my interest, subbed. I kinda want to get in on this fun.

@attribute-4677 4 ай бұрын

Your shop is awesome :O I need to organize my tools

@saveitforparts 4 ай бұрын

It's usually a giant mess in there. I try to keep the tools somewhat organized, because if I can't find one I get frustrated and go out and buy another one and then I end up with 10 tape measures or something.

@ProlificInvention 4 ай бұрын

That would make a super cool security camera mount: the constant panning and noise would make a great deterrent

@saveitforparts 4 ай бұрын

Ha, I've actually been taking apart security camera mounts to use for antennas 😂

@td4dotnet 4 ай бұрын

In terms of stepper control maybe an old 3d printer board would come in handy... serial / easy interface for steppers / easy hardware config for end stops. Track that sat with Gcode! :-) Thanks for the video SIFP always a treat!

@jb2590 4 ай бұрын

That unpopulated header looks like a JTAG interface

@danheidel 4 ай бұрын

Nice work! You've had more patience with the janky controller board that I would have ever had. I would recommend ditching the existing controller and just replacing it with a raspi or something. The vast majority of the functionality of the original board was in handling the RF signal and you're not taking advantage of that and just using it as a very contentious stepper motor controller. If you rolled your own stepper controller you could easily add some rotary encoders and end stops. You could also add a GPS module, an accelerometer and cheap compass module to the base so the unit can automagically handle rough alignment and to point the dish in the approximate direction of a satellite before using RF strength to home in on a signal.

@dbingamon 4 ай бұрын

Reminds me of the old Commodore 1541 Disk Drives that did a home by banging into the limit at track 1

@bef694 4 ай бұрын

Awesome channel!

@nathanbuczek8344 4 ай бұрын

Winegard is a company that makes a lot of components used in motorhomes and campers. From being a catv installer for way to long Id bet the reason you see a lot of it for free is not because the winegard equipment is bad but the other components wired through the camper/motorhome build were done during the manufacturing process and used cheap twist on connectors and cheap splitters causing issues that could be corrected. Most campgrounds now wired for cable give the alternative to ditch the winegard sat equipment.

@JordaoDM 4 ай бұрын

Another great video

@mercster 4 ай бұрын

"Wish this thing would stop rotating." I'm afraid I can't do that, Saveitforparts.

@mercster 4 ай бұрын

I actually overheard some chatter about Bias-Ts the other day, apparently some of them are designed to bow out if they're getting too much voltage. For instance, using a USB passthrough bias-T while also turning on the Bias-T built into an SDR. I dunno much about it and I don't know if it's applicable to what you're doing. They were talking about SDRPlay internal bias-t and that it has a series of fuses that are designed to pop if too much voltage and the bias-t is disabled, but then goes back to normal after a set period of time. Like, the fuses were meant to blow but it wasn't a permanent thing. I am no electrician.

@mercster 4 ай бұрын

Congrats on getting some coherent imaging towards the end! I know never to count you out, no matter how bleak things look towards the middle of the video. 😂