Meteor Logger

This piece of software detects forward scattered radio waves off meteors in real time. It is aimed to the radio meteor enthusiast who wants to get out the most information of his forward scatter radio observations in a strict numerical form. A distant vhf-transmitter with a continuously emitted cw-signal and an appropriate receiver capable of USB-mode are required. Software Defined Radios (SDR) work fine, even a RTL-SDR will do the job. "Meteor Logger" analyses the continuous audio stream delivered by the receiver. The signal detection relies on identifying signal signatures in the frequency domain instead using an amplitude threshold. Detected audio signals are recorded with a high frequency and temporal resolution. A tabular onscreen output of detected meteor signals gives an immediate feedback. Because many meteor enthusiast live in populated areas polluted by man made noise a measure is implemented to automatically notch a strong interference line. The integrated help gives important advice, please read it. Different to other software solutions "Meteor Logger" does no processing (it even do not apply a dead time), it just records date, time, frequency, spectral signal power and noise floor in about 11 ms steps. For a later processing the data are written to disc as a .csv-file. At least it can be necessary to reduce interference and conflate fragmented meteor signals. This and much more achieves the additional program "Process Data", see below. "Meteor Logger" is a Python 3 script. It has been tested under Windows 7 and 10.

A detailed description of "Meteor Logger" is published in the Journal of the International Meteor Organization: Kaufmann W. (2017): "New radio meteor detecting and logging software". WGN, The Journal of the IMO, 45:4, 67-72. You can read the article also here.

Graphical User Interface of "Meteor Logger"

Download:

The python script "MeteorLogger" can be downloaded here. Actual program version is 1.24a (2021-01-16): added error message in case of non accessible audio input-devices. Former version 1.24: enhanced frequency resolution, added manual notch. For an easy installation, see this notice.

Requirements:

Python 3.4 or later version must be installed on your computer. Besides the Python Standard Library the following additional modules are required:

pyaudio 0.2.11
numpy 1.16.2
scipy 1.2.1
matplotlib 3.03

It is recommended to install a complete python-package which includes these modules already. I developed "Meteor Logger" with WinPython and used the 32 bit version 3.6.8.0Qt5. For an easy installation, see this notice.

Process Data

This piece of software is also based on python 3. It reads the raw data produced by "Meteor Logger". It allows to filter out automatically most of interference and conflates fragmented meteor signals. The data can be plotted (frequency vs. time and power vs. time). It is possible to calculate hourly count rates as well as radio zenithal hourly rates and display them as histogram. The graph of the logarithmic cumulative power distribution may be displayed. Also frequency gradients of the head echoes can be computed and were shown as scatterplot. Different data extraction features are provided for further analysis (all data exports are .csv-files). Also a RMOB-compatible file export is implemented to feed the data to Cologramme Lab. For a detailed description of all features of "Process Data" see the manual. If you will make use of this software please study the manual thouroghly to get reliable results.

Download:

The python script "ProcessData" can be downloaded here. Actual program version is 1.67 (2020-05-09). New: minor changes of the identification algorithm of head echoes, corrected calculation of the logarithmic cumulative amplitude distribution, added possibility of manually entering the theoretical audio-frequency of the observed cw-transmitter in case the automatic detection fails. For an easy installation, see this notice.

Requirements:

Python 3.6 or later version must be installed on your computer. Besides the Python Standard Library the following additional modules are required:

numpy 1.16.2
scipy 1.2.1
matplotlib 3.0.3
ephem 3.7.7.1

It is recommended to install a complete python-package which includes these modules already except pyephem. Pyephem can be downloaded here. I developed "Process Data" with WinPython and used the 32 bit version 3.6.8.0Qt5. For an easy installation, see the following notice.

Notice:

For Windows users being not familiar with Python a complete installation package can be downloaded here. It comprises everything to install and use the above described pieces of software. A detailed guidance to the installation process inclusive a quick start guide to "MeteorLogger" and "ProcessData" (in English and German language) is part of the package .

MDopplerShift

MDopplerShift is a python script that has been written to implement a bistatic radar model for calculating Doppler shifts especially with respect to radio meteor head echoes. It was build on the thesis of Thomson W.P., 1985. The bistatic model bases on Cartesian coordinates. The origin of the coordinate system is coincident with the receiver position (x=0, y=0, z=0). The transmitter is positioned at a distance D on the x-axis (x=D, y=0, z=0). The meteoroid is entering the scene anywhere in the space (x, y, z). The meteoroid progress is stepwise calculated from its entry point. The Python script allows for the calculation of multiple trajectories from an entry point by automatically changing inclination and bearing in arbitrary steps. For further analysis the time-, x-, y-, z- and Doppler shift- data of the simulated trajectories can be stored as csv-file.

Download:

The python script "MDopplerShift" can be downloaded here. Actual program version is 0.32 (2019-11-16).

Requirements:

Python 3.4 or later version must be installed on your computer. Besides the Python Standard Library the matplotlib module (v 3.0.3) is required.

It is recommended to install a complete python-package which includes this module already. I developed "MDopplerShift" with WinPython and used the 32 bit version 3.6.8.0Qt5.

License:

"MeteorLogger", "ProcessData" and "MDopplerShift" are free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, version 3 of the License. These programs are distributed in the hope that they will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Affero General Public License for more details.