Mr 672A (10-07-20)
Good news everyone! Sam has been busy at work writing software to decode Himawaricast. So rather than the excessively expensive Kencast software, now there is an alternative. The first release 1.0 should be ready by the end of the week, after the bugs have been ironed out, Sam tweets. "Himawari-rx is written in Python so it will run on Windows, Linux or MacOS."
Last edited by Learjet; 05-10-20 at 03:02 PM.
And here it is! Sam must have waited to iron out the bugs etc. Have fun guys. Let me see your images! P.S. I don't have this software installed so I have no idea how to use it. I'm still using the Kencast software.
Got it working on my tbs6983 card, thanks Sam, it's not really user friendly atm but certainly the results are good after you figure out the sequence of operation.
Am curious to know why it is transmitted in B & W is that because grey scale is easier to define rather then colour which has an infinite range of values and can not always be accurately set?
Last edited by cmoore; 03-12-20 at 09:49 PM.
Himawari weather satellite decoding using Himawari-RX
Download the zip file from Sam's website. I reccomend you put the uncompressed folder into the main root directory of your PC
Other equipment required.
Reasonable sized C band sat dish min prob 2.3mt depending on location
A suitable dvb s2 pc based device either USB or PCI/e I am using a tbs6983s pcie card
Appropriate Software I am using EBSPro with tsreader embedded in it.
Once you are on 154e and confirmed you can see 4147h start EBSPro
In EBSPro go to rf scan and perform a Horz scan centred around 4147H
Left click on the area around 4147h and you should see an appropriate window pop up showing the service details and signal
If tsreader is embedded in EBSPro start it. Otherwise start it seperatlely.
From the first pull down menu select IP/DVB
Another widow will appear and show PID 1001. If it doesnt peak your dish for max signal.
Highlight and right click on the 1001 entry and select retransmit all UDP
Highlight the internet interface and select OK
Run himawari-RX.bat
If everything is ok you should see a window appear showing the bat file running with green lines scrolling showing the data being received. I ran it for 10 min but probably only needs a couple of minutes to extract sufficient information
Close the program down.
Again I should highlight that I would suggest you place the complete himawari file in the main root directory on you pc to simplify the next step.
Locate the himawari folder and open up the record folder and you will see multiple folders. Make a note of the exact path to these folders. I created a copy of the link in notepad to allow for easier reference and editing later.
You now need to compile the data received into a suitable jpeg files to view
Run the xrit-img.bat file. You will be prompted to enter the saved recorded path. Make sure you incl the exact folder you wantt to uncompile. Eg c:/himawari-rx/record/202012xx/0XXX
If you have it saved in notepad Paste te path into the window by right clicking it then press enter. After a few secs the program should show it compiling and then will close down.
Go to the appropriate folder and you can then view the multiple images that have been compiled. You will see various Greg scale levels. You can repeat the process on the other files downloaded to get numerous pictures that suit your needs.
I will try and make a video of the process if this looks to complicated. I also have screeenshots of the complete sequence but this would probably hog the thread so I won't upload at this time
Next trick is learning how to colourise it
Ive done this tutorial from my own experience and this may vary with other people's setup. It is not officaly supported by himawari-rx but Sam if you want to use it you are more then welcome to do so.
Enjoy
Last edited by cmoore; 05-12-20 at 05:17 PM.
Well done cmoore!
All weather sat cameras are monochrome. Filter combinations are used to make an RGB composite image. You need (at least) 3 channels for colour. I use B3, B4 and B5 minimum.
cmoore (09-12-20)
Do you have a folder with .HRIT files? If so, you can load them with a program called Xrit2pic and make the composites using that.
cmoore (10-12-20)
Thanks for that. After instaling the appropriate version of xmit2pic and the accompanying dll library installer into the programs directoryas instructed. I still get 1 error message "the code exception cannot proceed because hdf5.dll was not found, reinstall the program"
I tried locating the dll but all the website that have it look to be scams
Any clues on resolving this problem.
I vaguely remember having that problem on 1 of my computers also, but I can't remember how I fixed it!
cmoore (13-12-20)
cmoore (13-01-21)
Learjet, the thing with the flat Earthers, it doesn’t take a lot of equipment to capture a NOAA image themselves. A USB dongle for maybe $25 and a wire coat hanger antenna.
There’s the ISS, even easier to prove it’s up there and doppler shift kills any idea that it isn’t speeding around the Earth. I think they are mostly trolls.
Anyway as a ham, I’ve captured a lot of boring NOAA images, and ISS SSTV, but never anything digital yet.
I had some success after a friend gave me a working fake colour.bat for python and we now have colour.
I am not familiar with how it works but it is the same principle as used to compile the original data. When running the fake.bat file just point it to the folder that has the pic you want coloured and bingo
I can not really say the picture quality is the same as learjets method but at least it works and Ive saved myself $1k in software.
I will upload the fake.bat file later
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