UK Meteor Radar Project

I came across this webside with a very good explanation how Spectrum Lab could be used to observe meteor-scatter. Although the script is made to receive the reflections from the GRAVES beacon, you can find some nice details about Spectrum Lab itself.

https://www.blackwaterskies.co.uk/2021/ ... ctions_v8/

I have a love/hate relationship with Spectrum Lab. Soo many settings that can be either very useful, or otherwise ruining your waterfall display.
But when the reflections coming in, I always love Spectrum Lab! Nice piece of software to do testing and find weak signals which you would not see in the normal SDR software like SDR console or HDSDR.

Important tip:
If you start to experiment with SpectrumLab: Make sure that you save a default SpectrumLab setup for your self with the default settings you like!
As soon as you load setting files like the "Spectrum Lab conditional Actions V8" then so may settings are changed, you get lost very easily.
The way back home is then your saved default setting file.

When you are sure your setup is working, you can consider to downgrade the software and hardware to start using e.g. a RTL-SDR dongle in combination with a Raspberry Pi and software MeteorRadio https://github.com/rabssm/MeteorRadio

Distance does matter too. The further away from GB3MBA, obviously the signal is weaker, but also the airplane reflections are much weaker. This could make it easier to do automatic counting.

When you are closer to the beacon and the signals are very strong, including the airplane reflections, a antenna with less gain could help. E.g when I observe GRAVES I downgraded my antenna from a 3el Yagi to a very simple V-dipool, and since then no more airplane reflections. No shit in, no shit out.
Look for description at this website to build such an antenna https://wiki.bolidozor.cz/doku.php?id=en:antennas
The downside: only the 'stronger' meteor-reflections are received, so you lose the weaker meteor-reflections.

All the best,

Kees.

Kees wrote: ↑Fri Aug 12, 2022 9:12 am I came across this webside with a very good explanation how Spectrum Lab could be used to observe meteor-scatter. Although the script is made to receive the reflections from the GRAVES beacon, you can find some nice details about Spectrum Lab itself.

Kees.

Hi Kees,

I think you may not have included the website URL?

Cheers - Dave (G0DJA)

Thx Dave,
I added the link

Cheers, Kees

Thanks for the link,

I downloaded the ZIP file and looked at the 'readme' files and it says "These files are intended for the operation of Spectrum Lab with an RTL-SDR dongle" but I'm trying to use SpectrumLab with my radio and sampling the audio output from the radio, not through a RTL-SDR Dongle.

Hello Dave,

you can use any radio as audio input into Spectrumlab. The conditional actions V8 is based on using the NOOELEC SDR smart dongle which is more ore less the same as the RTL-SDR dongle. Fun cube pro dongle is also possible. If one of these SDR dongle or receivers is used, I use for example the SDRplay RSP2pro, the SDR software will make the audio which is used as input in Spectrum Lab.
If you want to use your radio with audio output on the radio it self, the conversion to audio is already done inside the radio, and thus you do not need the SDR software like HDSDR or SDR Console etc.

But a good read to start with is the presentation from Ian Lauwerys how to start with Spectrum Lab,

https://bwsmediafiles.s3.eu-west-2.amaz ... vanced.pdf

Then read all the post about Conditional Actions V7

https://www.blackwaterskies.co.uk/2019/ ... l-actions/

Then go to all the post of Conditional Actions V8

https://www.blackwaterskies.co.uk/2021/ ... ctions_v8/

And still you need to know that the script is written to receive more weaker signals from the GRAVES beacon. When you will use v8 for meteorcounting on GB3MBA you will notice that the airplane reflections will be counted as meteors.

Hope this helps a bit?

Kees

Thanks again, Kees,

I'll click on the links and have a read through.

I do have a few SDRs, an SDR-IQ, a Perseus, which are HF only, and an RTL Dongle and NooElec Ham It Up, but not enough USB ports...

Cheers - Dave (G0DJA)