open-weather
activity:open-weather

### About Open-weather is a collective experiment in imaging and imagining the earth and its weather systems using DIY community tools. Co-led by @sophied and @sashae, Open-weather probes the noisy relationships between bodies, atmospheres and weather systems through amateur radio, open data and intersectional feminist approaches to environmental sensing. Open-weather encompasses a series of how-to guides, critical frameworks and public workshops on the reception of satellite images using free or inexpensive amateur radio technologies. When possible, we work with open source software and hardware. Beyond Public Lab, the [Open-weather web platform](https://open-weather.community/) hosts an emerging archive of amateur radio-generated weather images as well as the first Open-weather 'community nowcast' linking 13 citizen ground stations around the world in an effort to engage with the complex relationships between weather and climate change. What do we mean by intersectional feminist approaches to environmental sensing? In Open-weather, we think critically about our 'politics of location' - our different social, economic, historical, geographical and political positions. In doing so we examine how we participate in relationships of power, especially those of white supremacy, in order to better identify and challenge structures of oppression. Through workshops and artistic performances, we bring attention to alternative histories of sensing atmosphere, weather and Earth. We explicitly focus on access to technology and we strive for equity. We ask: who or what gains power from satellite imagery, radio technology, meteorological and climatic data? Finally, we seek forms of sensitivity and responsiveness to the interconnected earth processes that sustain us. ### Location London and low Earth orbit. ### Project history @sophied and @sashae have been working on amateur radio-related projects since early 2017. In 2018 and 2019, @sophied and @sashae collaborated on several public workshops, artworks and writings including the performative script [_Lore of the Radio Fossil_](http://temporaryartreview.com/lore-of-the-radio-fossil/). They designed, coordinated and delivered amateur-radio workshops at the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths University; the Department of Geography, Royal Holloway University; and the [Royal College of Art, London](http://www.sophiedyer.net/teaching-and-learning/satellite-seance/). In April 2020, they launched Open-weather. From April to December 2020, Open-weather was supported by an interdisciplinary artistic residency at [Akademie Schloss Solitude](http://www.akademie-solitude.de/en/fellowship/fellows/sasha-engelmann~pe4017/), Stuttgart. In Summer 2020 @sophied and @sashae launched the [open-weather.community](https://open-weather.community/) web platform, a central node for the project. [![Satellite-1-1024x768.png](/i/39836)](/i/39836?s=o) Open-weather Workshop and Satellite Séance performance at the Royal College of Art, London, in January 2020. @sophied holds the turnstile antenna during the pre-pass talk with @sashae. Photo: Marco Ferrari ### Goals and motivations After @sashae and @sophied got their amateur radio Foundation Licences from the Radio Society of Great Britain it took months of poking around on the web to realise that it was possible to receive weather satellite images, then, more time, searching and hanging out in Ham Radio forums (@sashae is great at this) before they got the right hardware and software setups. Now they’ve done the research and have seen what's possible with inexpensive kit, and they want to share their experience by creating accessible, visually rich how-to guides with everything you need to know to get started, all in one place – without assuming **any** prior knowledge of radio, science or engineering. Goals On Public Lab: * To produce accessible, visually rich and well-documented guides for setting up DIY satellite ground stations for reception of NOAA images. These will be targeted at non-experts (and non-hams). Our hope is that the guides will be useful to curious individuals and practitioners. * To co-author guides that are useful resources for experimental and interdisciplinary teaching and learning at various educational levels. * Discover mutual interests and synchronicities between amateur radio-generated satellite imagery and other kinds of environmental data or projects on Public Lab. On the Open-weather web platform: * To build and maintain a public, amateur radio-generated archive of images and sounds decoded from different satellites, starting from the NOAA fleet, progressing to the Russian Meteor fleet and eventually EU and US-operated geostationary satellites. ### People who are involved Open-weather is a project by UK-based designer @sophied and creative geographer @sashae . The project has been shaped and informed by many others, including: * Bill Liles (NQ6Z) * James Thieman ([Radio Jove/NASA](https://radiojove.gsfc.nasa.gov/)) * Larry Dodd (K4LED) * [Radio Society of Harrow](https://www.g3efx.org.uk/) (G3EFX) * Weather or Not Reading and Listening group * Rachel Dedman, Laure Selys and Arjuna Neuman (Radio Earth Hold) * Daisy Hildyard * The [Soundcamp](https://soundtent.org/soundcamp_reveil.html) 2020 team * The [RTL-SDR Network and Forum](https://www.rtl-sdr.com/) ### What are we currently working on * We are continually working on the [open-weather web platform](https://open-weather.community/) and community archive, initially designed with developer [Piper Haywood](https://piperhaywood.com/). * With the help of the Public Lab community, we are testing our 'DIY Satellite Ground Station' guide (posted in Activities below). * We are developing a series of other accessible how-to guides that extend from the 'DIY Satellite Ground Station' guide and will enable others to further customise and optimise their ground stations. * We are exploring how to make the software ecosystem of NOAA weather data reception more resilient and open source. * We are hosting 1-day public workshops in which participants each create their own DIY Satellite Ground Stations and decode their first NOAA satellite transmission. * We are growing and evolving the Open-weather community network through global weather 'nowcasts' carried out in collaboration with citizen participants at various locations around the planet ### Updates Are you interested in following Open-weather? Subscribe to the tag below to get updates when we post new material. Subscribe to updates on this project [notes:open-weather] ### Questions [questions:open-weather] **** ### Activities we've done in our project [activities:open-weather] ### Data The emerging open-weather archive can be found here: https://open-weather.community/archive.html [![NOAA_18_S_49_W_2020-05-17_11-34_BST_hvc_horizontal.png](/i/39835)](/i/39835?s=o) An image decoded from a NOAA 18 Southbound pass at 49 degrees West on 17th May 2020 at 11-34 BST. Satellite ground station: Burgess Park, South London. ...


Author Comment Last activity Moderation
Marius104 "I recorded NOAA 15 tonight and it was a pretty good signal. I have an iPhone and found a sound recording app that would save files in .wav. I tri..." | Read more » 8 months ago
Koni "Hello everyone, it has been long with out posting. Hope everyone is fine. I am currently working on a DIY satellite ground station project basing o..." | Read more » 11 months ago
Ag8n "Be sure to read page 2 of the radio reference post listed above. " | Read more » over 1 year ago
Ag8n "Ok. Found another discussion. It's on radioreference. The address is: forums.radioreference.com/threads/rtl-sdr-windows-11438577/ Apparently,..." | Read more » over 1 year ago
Ag8n "This one is weird. If you go to rtl-sdr.com. Do a search on "guide book" for "zadig". The third hit, Under Quick Start Guide,item number 8,gives..." | Read more » over 1 year ago
Ag8n "Yeah, my software ended with Fortran, many years ago. But if you get into the discussions, following the post, of how windows11 decided that they ..." | Read more » over 1 year ago
Ag8n "The answer was basically to go back to Windows 10! " | Read more » over 1 year ago
Ag8n "No such luck. The problem is apparently Windows11 based. The best reference, so far, is in "reddit rtlsdr" from 5 days ago by YalekW. It gives a..." | Read more » over 1 year ago
sashae "Hi Ag8n, yes please do update! That would be very useful to know. " | Read more » over 1 year ago
Ag8n "May have found the problem. According to some websites, it's the version of windows11. If it upgrade s to 22H2, you are ok. If it's another vers..." | Read more » over 1 year ago
Ag8n "Hey Sashae....I'm getting a little nervous. Using windows11. And hear a lot about problems with Zadig. Do you know of any work arounds? Thanks,..." | Read more » over 1 year ago
sashae "Thank you! yes so nice to see it shared there :) " | Read more » over 1 year ago
Ag8n "Think I got it right this time. The write up in rtl-sdr for Open-Weather was quite impressive. Congrats! " | Read more » over 1 year ago
Ag8n "Yes, that's the one! Sorry about that! Ok. So playing with SDR ++ shouldn't cause any problems. Thank you!! " | Read more » over 1 year ago
sashae "Hi! Are you referring to this post? https://www.rtl-sdr.com/apt_color-add-false-color-to-black-and-white-noaa-apt-images/ Unfortunately that wasn'..." | Read more » over 1 year ago
Ag8n "Sashae- Caught your note on Rtl-Sdr about progress with the demodulator. Will it still use SDR# and what plug ins are recommended? Thank you. " | Read more » over 1 year ago
bnjmnearl "Hello! I'm gone through all the steps and successfully compiled the software, however the text of the interface has been replaced by little square ..." | Read more » over 1 year ago
sashae "Yes that's the idea! In DIY Satellite Ground Station workshops we often found it difficult to navigate different operating systems on the fly. APT ..." | Read more » almost 2 years ago
Ag8n "This looks great!! Thank you! Is this also a way around all the different platforms ( windows, linux, etc.)? " | Read more » almost 2 years ago
sashae "Hi @Liz! Thanks for asking. Yes a link is coming soon. This research note will also be expanded significantly in the coming weeks. " | Read more » almost 2 years ago
sashae "Hello @Ag8n ! A link to the decoder will be added before the end of the week. This research note will be expanded to include information on the pro..." | Read more » almost 2 years ago
liz "Fantastic! Is there a link to the online decoder? Would love to play around with it. " | Read more » almost 2 years ago
Ag8n "How does it compare to wxtoimg? The picture sure looks good. " | Read more » almost 2 years ago
github "Turns out that the rustup I installed via brew wasn't happy. I ran curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh and got past th..." | Read more » over 2 years ago