Dragons indeed! I've gotten a copy of rtldavis working on a MacBook with the dongle. I now know my neighbor's water usage, which is great, but not the ISS :-) The problem I seem to be having, grossly, is either locking onto the ISS in the first place (though I do seem to handshake at times) and sticking to it thru the hops, and then getting that feed interpreted into a usable format. I seem to get stuck with weewx just spitting out simulator data.
It's tough troubleshooting to me b/c I am using outputs as diagnostics, and there are "chained layers", in my own words. I wish I could see more than just a handshake with the ISS signal, but once it does that to have rtldavis spit out what it is receiving onto the command line. Happy to start over, just not quite sure how. On Saturday, May 16, 2026 at 8:26:21 PM UTC-4 Greg Troxel wrote: > WeatheredScientist <[email protected]> writes: > > > What I've come to realize is that I have to intercept the radio signal > from > > the ISS in order to do what I want with weewx. > > > > To that end I've purchased an RTL-SDR v3 dongle, which may or may not be > > DOA (TBD!). But the idea is to use that as my receiver, then decode with > > the rtldavis driver for weewx. > > My advice is to build the latest rtl_433 from git and listen on 433.92, > 315, and 915, or something else depending on what country you are in > (and hence what the allowed frequencies are). > > Also check which librtlsdr you have, but with a v3 (vs v4) it should be > ok. > > You should see lots of things decoded, that you didn't know existed, > like temperature sensors, car TPMS and more. > > Only when you can decode random other stuff should you try to listen to > your ISS. > > > The Davis RF protocol is vastly more complicated than everything else, > and needs synchronization, and you need to select the region-specific > hopping patterns. I think it takes a while to figure out where in the > cycle the pattern is and can then follow it. I haven't done this; I > just know there be dragons. > > > (You could also consider > https://www.meteobridge.com/wiki/index.php?title=Meteobridge_PRO2 > which seems to mostly work but has awkward interfaces if what you want > is weewx. It's also real money compared to a RTL-SDR dongle.) > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "weewx-user" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/weewx-user/b338de45-20f3-4b4c-b988-7d596e80ae58n%40googlegroups.com.
