EUMETCast
Reception
Setup
for the reception and analysis of EUMETCast Data
Data from
EUMETSAT is received via a TV broadcasting satellite, Eurobird9 at 9°E.
The service is called EUMETCast, and it is provided by a tq®-TELLICAST
server.
The data is only broadcast once so if you miss a transmission you lose
the data.
EUMETCast services provided by EUMETSAT include Meteosat-9 (MSG-2),
FSD, AVHRR and now Metop-A data.
Meteosat-9 (MSG-2) is a
second-generation geostationary weather satellite for Europe, providing
twelve spectral channels.
FSD - foreign satellite data - includes hourly images from
geostationary satellites around the world, such as the GOES-West and
GOES-East stationed over the Americas, Meteosat-7 provides the Indian
Ocean Data Coverage (IODC), and MTSAT-1R covers Asia and Australia.
EARS-AVHRR provides high-resolution 5-channel HRPT image data from the
AVHRR scanner on NOAA-17 and NOAA-18.
Data from several ground stations (Canary Islands, Northern France, and
Svalbard, north of the Artic Circle) is combined to give Europe-wide
coverage. The data has a 1km per pixel ground resolution.
EUMETCast is the main dissemination for data from Metop-A satellite,
launched in October 2006.
This satellite provides high-resolution continuous round-the-world
coverage, with data at 1km per pixel resolution.
80
cm dish and LNB
purchased from GEO shop. This is mounted in the front garden on the
fence. The fence posts not being absolutely rigid, an additional pole
is driven into the ground. I am looking at ways of mounting on the end
wall of the house.
Unfortunately the ideal mounting wall has a telephone pole right in the
line of sight.
TechniSat-DVB-PC-TV-Star-PCI
card, installed in reception PC (Kepler) All the PCs have names
associated with Astronomy. One doesn't use the software provided with
the card, using instead that provided by EUMETSAT.
EUMETSAT's
EKU, supplied by them at €40.
Relevant software package costs a further €60.
Both direct from EUMETSAT.
The
screenshot to the left shows one of the monitoring graphs produced by
MRTG (see below).
SNR(blue) & Signal Quality(green)
My dish is mounted quite low and close to the neighbours fence. I
thought I had cleared his overhanging trees, but one can see the impact
a very heavy rain shower had on weighing down overhanging branches. The
improvement came when I cut back the offending branches. It was still
raining.
The second graph shows 'The Squirrel Effect'
One morning at 8.00am BST I noticed that my signal quality had fallen.
My wife had seen a couple of squirrels collecting berries and nuts in
the front garden. At about 9.30 am BST I went out to do a bit of
shopping and noted that there were muddy pawprints on the dish. The
dish is only a couple of feet from the ground.
Closer
inspection
found mud on the LNB and support arm. Cable seemed intact and I wiped
down everything and went on my way. On returning home I found the
signal was even worse. Further inspection showed that the cable was
partly pulled out of the LNB. The squirrels must be suspect and I had
obviously made it worse when giving the dish a quick wipe down.
Remaking the connection improved matters.
Wildlife can impact on our hobby! It reminded me of when I had a Garden
Railway - Hedgehogs and Cats in tunnels, Ants along the rails, Wasp
nests under the track, Frogs and Toads in retaining walls ( even found
a Newt once) and worst of all were the Thrushes using the rail head to
smash their snails - leaving a neat pile for my small scale locos to
trip over.
Moral - beware squirrels collecting nuts in Fall (or any
wildlife for that matter). Glad I have nothing bigger than
squirrels to contend with.
Data
is transmitted
from the various spacecraft to Earth stations in Germany (Meteosat 9),
Svalbard (Metop-A) and Canary Islands, Northern France, and Svalbard
(NOAA 17/18 AVHRR).
Meteosat 9 data is refined, compressed and encoded as HRIT and LRIT
files.
The HRIT and LRIT files are added to the EUMETCast service.
The EUMETCast data is sent up to the Eurobird 9 satellite as small
packets.
Other packets of data, such as Metop-A and Foreign Satellite Data (FSD)
are also sent up to Eurobird 9, but with different packet identifiers
(PIDs).
The Dish, LNB, and Skystar2 card receive the packets of data.
The Server4PC turns the data packets into a TCP/IP stream, passing only
the PIDs you have selected in the software.
DVB
and TelliCast
Data from the satellite is tagged with a packet identifier called the
PID, and using the setup for your DVB card you can choose which PIDs
the card should handle.
Individual PIDs are set in the DVB software (right-click the green
satellite
icon
Setup4PC, Data
Services).
The data is sent from the DVB card to the TelliCast receiving program
as an IP multicast stream.
The data is further divided into different channels. A single PID may
contain a number of different streams, but each stream will have a
different multicast address.
The multicast address of the "Announcement channel" stream is fixed,
and that channel talks to the TelliCast program saying what data is
available.
The TelliCast program is configured to accept particular data channels
(by editing the recv-channels.ini file in the TelliCast software -see
my config file below), and if you are allowed access by your EKU, when
data is available for that channel, the TelliCast program will "join"
the multicast being sent out via the DVB software, and when the DVB
software finds a "joined" channel, it will send out the data packets
for that stream to the appropriate multicast address.
[EUMETSAT
Data Channel 1]
target_directory=D:\received
[EUMETSAT Data Channel 2]
target_directory=D:\received
[EUMETSAT Data Channel 3]
target_directory=D:\received
[EUMETSAT Data Channel 4]
target_directory=D:\received\Data Channel 4
[EUMETSAT Data Channel 5]
target_directory=D:\received-56
[EPS-10]
target_directory=D:\EPSreceived
[EPS-18]
target_directory=D:\EPSreceived\EPS18
The
various pages of
the Tellicast software give information regarding data traffic, active
channels and the number of lost and recovered data packets.
Data Manager software turns the files into a usable format for
producing images.
I use the following software from David
Taylor.
To manage and decode Meteosat-9 (MSG-2) data, I use MSG Data Manager.
To make real-time monochrome animations from Meteosat-9 or Foreign
Satellite Data, I use MSG Animator.
To make false-colour images, remap to standard map projections, or
animate the images I use GeoSatSignal.
To manage and decode Metop-A data I use Metop Manager. To manage and
decode NOAA 17/18 data I use AVHRR Manager.
To make false colour corrected images out of this data I use HRPT
Reader.
I also use
Kepler Manager (satellite orbital information),WxTrack (satellite
tracking),GroundMap (Correct Geometry Mapping)
My
Workstation.
It all looks a bit untidy, but works well. I use Synergy
to move between the two PC's. This means I only need one keyboard and
one mouse to control everything. Just in view to the left of the screen
is the wireless router and there is a seperate modem. The PC's are
attached via ethernet cables. The wireless is used by another PC and my
laptop.
PC Kepler is
the receive PC.
This HP pavilion was
bought as one intended mainly for students. AMD Sempron 1800MHz. 80Gb
hard drive, 1Gb RAM and Win XP Home
I added another 1Gb RAM and a second 200GB SATA harddrive. It also has
a Q
Soft 320 Mb Ramdrive installed. There is a free AR-Soft RamDisk, which
is unsupported, available on the MSG-1 yahoo group.
I also changed the case cooling to something quieter. This PC is on
continuously 24/7. Not only does it run TelliCast all day it also runs
David Taylor's MSGDataManger & GeoSatSignal &
MSG
Animator [see below].
PC
Copernicus.
This I built myself in early 2009 following a hard drive failure over
Christmas..
Intel Core 2 Quad CPU, Q6600 @ 2.40 GHz, 3.25Gb RAM, 500 Gb Hard drive,
2x200Gb SATA Hard drives in RAID 0 and a 500Gb USB external drive for
storage. Lots of cooling fans, Artic Cooling CPU heatsink and fan and
fanless graphics card. All controlled by the Zalman fan controller with
the blue led's visible. Runs very quietly and temperatures about 10 deg
above ambient.
Win XP Pro.
This PC runs all David Taylor's Metop Manager & AVHRR Manager
(see
below) along with everything else [Browsing, Email, word processing,
PowerPoint, Photoshop,FTP software, regularly getting data from Kepler
and uploading it to my web pages] for about 16-18 hours per day.
Obviously needs its annual dusting!
The
T-Systems
TelliCast software (seen here to the left) turns the DVB card into a
channel through which files are received from EUMETSAT and dumped on
your PC. The TelliCast software recovers the files from the TCP/IP
stream, looking only at the data channel names you have selected.
The data channels chosen in my system are given below in my
recv-channels config file. Or follow links here for full files.
recv.ini
recv-channels.ini
David has written
extensively about EUMETCast and his software on his website.
In my opinion using his software is the only practical 'joined up'
solution to managing the vast amount of data available from EUMETCast.
The software is competetively priced (you get a months free trial for
each program).
The software is continually updated. Almost uniquely you have direct
access to the author and fellow users through his SatSignal Yahoo
Group. SatSignal@yahoogroups.com
I have included basic information and some screenshots from
each program. For more details visit David's website.
MSG
DataManager
The MSG Data Manager is a Windows program that will process the files
received from MSG-2. The data manager will automatically
process
the files into images, and optionally delete the large amounts of
source data that would otherwise accumulate. The program
allows
you to choose which of the twelve channels you process to images, and
also allows you to keep some raw data in the processing PC should you
wish.
The screenshots to the right show MSG-2, FSD and Setup pages.
MSG
Animator
The MSG Animator provides real-time animation of images from MSG-2 and
other weather satellites received with the MSG Data Manager. Multiple
simultaneous, independent animations, updated in real time as new data
becomes available. Animation of Meteosat-7& 9, MTSAT-1R,
& GOES
East & West data providing world-wide coverage. Looping and
smoothing of animations. False-colour option. Control over animation
length. Save an animation in standard Windows AVI format.
GeoSatSignal
GeoSatSignal is designed to process geostationary satellite
data.
As the data is a sequence of images from the same well-defined
location, more complex processing can be done. GeoSatSignal allows you
to combine data in a number of ways:
-multiple
channels to
produce a false-colour image, including channel differences
-multiple
segments of a single satellite view
-multiple
satellites to produce a world view
-multiple
times to produce an animation
-correct
data to standard map projection
Some sample job settings
Metop
Manager
-move the data chunks from the TelliCast received directory to their
final directory
-convert the data chunks from EPS to a standard HRPT format - allows
you to use standard software for further processing
-provide a lossless compressed HPT format
-provide a thumbnail JPEG file for each chunk
-organise the data by days in a standard \year\month\day\ directory
hierarchy
-includes a Browser view of a whole day's passes on a world map
-choice of displaying ascending, descending passes or both
-select chunks to be combined with a simple mouse stroke
-combine HRPT files from multiple chunks to a single "pass"
-automatically display the "pass" in the HRPT Reader software
Two screenshots are shown
The first is the 'World View ' page. This displays the received chunks
from the current orbit.
The second is the 'Browser' view. All chunks received in a day are
displayed here and can be selected (individually or a sequence) as a
preview or for further processing in HRPT Reader.
HRPT
Reader
This program reads HRPT produced in both Metop Manager and AVHRR
Manager.
The program will allow you to make false colour images by combining the
five or more available channels into red, green, and blue or, if you
prefer, by taking one of the visible channels as brightness and one of
the IR channels as colour.
You can save what you create in compressed and uncompressed formats and
geometrically corrected or not.
Uncorrected files can be remapped in GroundMap another of David's
programs.
Further processing can be done in a photo editing program such as Adobe
Photoshop™
AVHRR
Manager
The AVHRR Manager assists with the reception and management of
NOAA-17/18 AVHRR data being sent over EUMETCast.
The AVHRR Manager will:
De-compress
the NOAA-17/18 data.
Re-assemble
of the segmented data into composite AVHRR files.
Handle
out-of-order data.
Provide
quick-look Map View display of current pass.
Provide
a view of the latest segment processed.
Provide
a browser for
both image thumbnails and AVHRR data, with quick access to processing
software.
The composite output produced by the program is in a standard format,
allowing viewing by software like my HRPT Reader.
Alan Banks © 2010 All rights reserved
