Looking at the dark night sky, in addition to admiring the stars, it can be interesting to observe the satellites (which many people believe are UFOs). This is what Gabe, who was born in Alaska, and the creator of the YouTube channel called “saveitforparts” thinks. More precisely, he was more interested in whether it would be possible to see these satellites even in broad daylight. Encouraged by this, he also put together a self-made “microwave camera”, and by implementing his DIY idea, the satellites orbiting the Earth can be seen at any time of the day.
About the cool invention Blog Entryand a 20-minute video was also made, in which Gabe gives a detailed account of the details of his project.
“I have dealt with radio telescopes before, mainly as a way to use old TV satellite dishes. This time, however, I converted the satellite dish into a microwave “camera” that can take pictures in the Ku-band.”
What can an old satellite dish do?
“I converted a portable satellite dish into a microwave imager or Ku-band ‘camera’. This small motorized dish scans around and records signal strength to create a heat map of microwave radio energy. It could be ideal for observing satellites in orbit, finding RF leaks in a room, or taking pictures of reflected microwave energy.”
Gabe used a recycled portable satellite dish for his experiment. These can now be bought for pennies and include pretty much everything you need for satellite communications in one package: a small dish, a motorized altazimuth horgin, a low-noise block amplifier (LNB) and a single-board computer running a Linux shell.
After figuring out how to point the dish to certain coordinates and read the signal strength of the received transponder signals, Gabe wrote a Python program to automate the task. (THE code he didn’t hesitate to share it on his GitHub profile, noting that he welcomes suggestions for improving/simplifying the code, as programming is not his forte). Data from the sky sweep produced heat maps that showed a bright arc of geostationary satellites in the southern sky. This is very similar to what Justin from Thought Emporium did made some time ago, albeit in a much more compact and portable package.
Gabe also tried turning the dish away from the satellites and seeing what his house looked like bathed in microwaves reflected from the satellite constellation, which worked surprisingly well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=videoseries