Automatic Radiosonde Receiver Utilities

Please refer to the auto_rx wiki for the latest information.

This fork of rs1279's RS codebase provides a set of utilities ('auto_rx') to allow automatic reception and uploading of Radiosonde telemetry to multiple services, including:

• The Habitat High-Altitude Balloon Tracker

• APRS-IS (for display on sites such as radiosondy.info and aprs.fi

• ChaseMapper for mobile radiosonde chasing.

There is also a web interface available on http://localhost:5000 , allowing display of station status and basic tracking of the sonde position.

Currently we support the following radiosonde types:

• Vaisala RS92
• Vaisala RS41
• Graw DFM06/DFM09/DFM17/PS-15
• Meteomodem M10 & M20
• Intermet iMet-4 (and 'narrowband' iMet-1 sondes)
• Lockheed Martin LMS6 (400 MHz and 1680 MHz variants, including the new 'LMS-X' unreleased type)
• Meisei iMS-100

Support for other radiosondes may be added as required (please send us sondes to test with!)

This software performs the following steps:

1. Use rtl_power to scan across a user-defined frequency range, and detect peaks in the spectrum.

2. For each detected peak frequency, run the rs_detect utility, which determines if a radiosonde signal is present, and what type it is.

3. If a radiosonde signal is found, start demodulating it, and upload data to various internet services.

4. If no peaks are found, or if no packets are heard from the radiosonde in a given amount of time (2 minutes by default), go back to step 1.

The latest version can make use of multiple RTLSDRs to allow for tracking of many radiosondes simultaneously. The number of simultaneous radiosondes you can track is limited only by the number of RTLSDRs you have setup!

Refer to the wiki for the latest updates, and installation/setup instructions.

This software is under regular development. Please update regularly to get bug-fixes and improvements!

Contacts

• Mark Jessop - vk5qi@rfhead.net
• Michaela Wheeler - radiosonde@michaela.lgbt

You can often find us in the #highaltitude IRC Channel on Freenode.