Build an Attractive, Informative Mac Desktop with GeekTool. Satellite Weather Map - Add your. You can do some impressive things with GeekTool. You can find additional scripts and commands. Capturing Weather Satellites Easily I've been wanting to capture weather satellite signals for quite a while. This was one of my considerations when I chose the SDRPlay, since the high-quality digital mode is 4 MHz wide.
Hi this is Gary with MacMost Now. On today's episode let's take a look at Geek Tool. Geek Tool is an interesting way for you to extend your Desktop by adding little widgets to it.
Things that you can see on your Desktop that are kind of there in the background. You can get Geek Tool in the Mac App Store. Just do a quick search for it and it will come right up. You can download it for free. So here is what Geek Tool looks like when you run it.
Now you drag and drop things out of here onto your Desktop. For instance let's try dragging an image out. It is going to create this little space here on the Desktop that I can move around anywhere that I want. Then under Properties here, I can set Properties of that image.
Now that image can be something locally like a local image that you've got but that doesn't really give you any functionality. What is more interesting is to put a URL. I'm going to paste in an URL of a weather satellite image that is updated from the US government. What will happen is I can put that here and I can drag it and enlarge it.
That image is on the Desktop. If I click out of Geek Tool and I'm just in the Finder now I can see that it is just there on the background. Part of the background of the Desktop. It will remain there.
I can cover it with stuff. I can't drag it again until I select Geek Tool again and then I can drag it. But the cool thing is that it will update as the image changes. So everyday I can look and see the new weather information. Weather is an obvious one but you can think of probably other images that are out there where there is a static URL but the actual image there changes like say maybe a webcam or something.
In addition you can drag file information. So this will put some text here on the Desktop. This text I can put anywhere I want and I can resize the window. I can set what it is. So like I can for instance use a log file here. Let me get my Apache firewall log if I want to be really geeky and it will put that information there on the Desktop and as that file changes it will be updated.
So this could be something here where you can have logs or some other information that appears and it changes. Again if I am not in Geek Tool you can see it is just static information on the Desktop.
It is not really static. It will be updated but I can't change it or affect it. It is really there on the Desktop in the background. Probably the most ultra geeky thing that you can do is to use a shell script. Let me put a shell script here.
It is like a terminal command. I can do something like top which will display information about things that are running on my Mac and I can have it update every three seconds. Let me make it an easier color to see. Now you can see this information here. You can see the results of top. Or I can use something like all sorts of different things to display the current date.
You can see it displays the date there as it would return from a terminal command but in addition I can now customize that by changing the font and color. So I can put a clock on my Desktop that easily. Now if I click off you can see that it just stays there in the background on the Desktop. Remember I said it should update every three seconds so you can see it is doing that.
Probably for this one I would want to set it to update every second so it now acts like a normal clock there on the background of my Desktop. You can use any shell script. So the more you know about programming, the more you know about terminal commands, you can put different bits on here, Geeklets they are called, on your Desktop to give you information. Then when you quit Geek Tool you can say No I do not want to disable Geek Tool I just want to quit running the app there. I am not running the app anymore but this information remains on the screen. You can see this is updating.
The Apache firewall would update and also this weather image here would update all at the same time while things change in the world. So that is the basics. Now if you search for a Geek Tool ideas or Geek Tool Geeklets or whatever on the internet you will find out all sorts of ideas that other people have done with Geek Tool. Stuff that they can use from shell scripts and images and texts files or URLs that they can display on their Desktop to give them useful information and make them more productive. Hope you found this useful. Until next time this is Gary with MacMost Now.
7/15/13 @ 11:35 am Love the idea of geek tool and this was a good video tutorial. Unfortunately, when I downloaded geektool it did not work. I have a new iMac, so it should work fine. I could add an image to the desktop, and a local image worked fine. However, when I added a url as you showed in the video, nothing happened, and the radar image (from the url I added) didn’t appear in the image box. All of the sudden, from what seemed a cool new thing for the desktop, it became a useless waste of time.
Edit 25/4/2016: There is a plugin for SDR sharp that now does a lot of this process for you and is all together a lot quicker. The SDR plugin way of doing it is less robust as I’ve compared both methods multiple times but the time savings are probably worth it. Example Image (cropped) My first visible light Meteor LRPT weather satellite image Above is a cropped image from the Meteor-M N2 polar orbiting Russian weather satellite that was launched on 8th July 2014. From this satellite we can freely acquire Low Resolution Picture Transmission (LRPT) images. Hardware Needed. A suitable SDR USB stick (e.g. ).
Now comes a choice. If you don’t have a proper aerial, for example a one, pictured against the sky below, then you could, as a prototype, use something like this TV/Freeview aerial below which has a built-in amplifier:. Now if you’re serious about getting good images you should get an aerial and dedicated amplifiers that are designed for the job:. An amplifier (if using a ‘proper’ aerial with no built-in amplifier). The signal is not very strong if you just use the dongle and the aerial. An amplifier is necessary between the antenna and the SDR dongle. For best results you will need a low noise pre amplifier followed by a higher gain amplifier.
![Scripts Scripts](https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/applications/core/interface/imageproxy/imageproxy.php?img=http://www.youtoart.com/design_pic/bigpic//b_1244446693954.jpg&key=fd85675c674d6e47e56b4b5a4bd26ff1a6d8d2f155bcb772aafcc0f94829d036)
All in you will need approximately 40-50db gain. Software Needed. A copy of the LRPTofflineDecoder, available here: or. (if your SDR# (sharp) does not come with zadig.exe) Steps Step 1 – Setup your hardware Setup your hardware. Put the aerial in a suitable location, outside away from metal structures is probably best. If not using a TV aerial with built-in amplifier then connect up the aerial to the first low noise pre-amp and then connect the output of the pre-amp to the input of your higher gain amplifier.
Attach your SDR USB dongle to the output of your amplifier and plug it into the a USB slot. Everything is now wired up and ready for you to install and setup all the software. Step 2 – Orbitron Orbitron is the software which will allow us to track the satellites and know then they are close enough for us to hear them with our receiver. Install Orbitron by downloading it and running the file.
We now need to setup Orbirton to get the correct needed to track the satellites. Setup Orbitron by following these steps.
Set your location: Find the menu button which is hidden away at the top right, circled in red in this image: Click it and choose AutoUpdate TLE, click ok and let it update all the.txt files containing the orbital elements. Click the menu again and choose load TLE, select Weather.txt Now you will see a list of satellites on the right hand side. Tick the ones you want to see in this case we’re interested in Meteor M2.
(you may also want to too, they’re easier to get but lower resolution) Step 3 – Audacity Download it and follow the installer. Step 4 – LRPTRx & LRPTofflineDecoder Both LRPTRx and LRPTofflineDecoder do not require installation, they can just be run BUT MUST BE RUN AS ADMINISTRATOR. (right click run as administrator, or set it permanently in the compatibility tab under properties) Step 5 – SDR Sharp – part 1 (zadig.exe) EDIT: If your SDR# (sharp) download did not come with the zadig.exe file then you can download it from here: Download SDR sharp and run the batch file in a CMD running as admin. This will download the files needed for SDR Sharp to run.
Ensure the SDR dongle is plugged in and follow below to setup the SDR USB driver. You must first run sdr-install sdrsharp zadig.exe, again this must run as admin. Select Options List All Devices: Select Bulk-In interface 0: Choose WinUSB in the box to the right of the green arrow: Click Replace Driver. Step 6 – SDR Sharp – part 2 (config) Now, start up SDRSharp.exe and select RTL-SDR / USB in the source drop down. We also want to make sure other settings are correct.
Correct IQ should be checked WFM (Wideband FM) should be selected Bandwidth should be set to 140000Hz Recording LRPT signals requires that we select Baseband in the recording tab, not just the audio like we do with NOAA satellites. The last part of the SDR setup is to set our frequency. The Meteor M2 satellite is transmitting on two frequencies, we will be listening to the signal on 137.1MHz. So set your SDR sharp frequency to that. Note: you may also need to increase your gain in SDR Sharp under the cog menu icon, mine is set to 30db but this is something that will differ for every setup and should be tweaked to what looks good for you, i.e.
Increase the gain until the signal noise is increasing at the same rate. Step 7 – Recording the transmission So things start to get a little more interesting now. Once you click the run arrow icon you should start to see a spectrum of signals and noise in SDR Sharp. Make sure the satellite is going over / close to your location. ( Look at the yellow circles on Orbitron to see when it will be in range, it will probably be a fair amount smaller than the circles in Orbitron in reality, depending on your aerial.) You should then start to see a signal peak around 137.1MHz as shown below: Make sure to click record! (baseband only for LRPT which is used on Meteor M2) Step 8 – Decoding and preparing the files. Find the file that was saved, usually saved in the same directory as the SDRSharp.exe you ran.
Open the.wav in audacity. Change the project sample rate (bottom left) to be 140000Hz Amplify (effects-amplify) the signal only if needed. The amplitude during the main signal should be approximately 2/3 of the maximum. Then export the audio (File Export audio) and save it somewhere.
The next part of preprocessing the file is done by using LrptRx.exe (running as admin or else it will fail to write any files) Open the file you exported from audacity with the LrptRx.exe application. Check swap I/Q Click run and eventually you should see the green dots in the 4 quadrant graph start to make 4 distinct constellations: Let LrptRx.exe run until the progress bar in the middle gets to the end but beware it will not stop automatically so manually stop it near or at the end, no idea why the author did not make it auto stop, sigh. Now find the output file generated by LrptRx.exe and start up LRPToffLineDecoder.exe as admin. Tick the ignore RS check box.
![Geek Tool Scripts Weather Image Satellite Geek Tool Scripts Weather Image Satellite](http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/17/2011/08/geektool-time-allwindows-lg.jpg)
Click the 72k button and open your.raw file, your image should slowly start to appear. To save the image change the RGB drop downs to all match the column you want to save, e.g. Set all to 3.5 – 4.1 Then click generate and save the image, below is my first ever M2 image, a bit broken up but not bad! Please do feel free to share yours here too, i’d like to see them.
Phew, that’s a lot of work but it’s worth it for the unique images we can get. I will be investigating other ways to process the files as this method is very time consuming and requires many manual steps.
Once I have an automated way of doing this with either the same or different software I will definitely post my method. Old post, but I used to work on the NASA Earth Observing System spacecraft so I have some unique experience here. If you Google “nasa direct readout” or “nasa direct broadcast” you’ll find a ton of useful resources. A large number of science satellites have Earth-facing antennas that are constantly broadcasting realtime imagery, and the NASA Direct Readout Laboratory provides a free software suite that includes scheduling algorithms, packet processors, quick-look viewing, scientific processing, and archive features. Back in college, I used to set that stuff up for STEM magnet high schools so students could generate imagery from the Aqua and Terra spacecraft.