Can you believe that [hpux735] pulled this satellite weather image down from one of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s weather satellites using home equipment? It turns out that they’ve got three weather satellites in low earth orbit that pass overhead a few times a day. If you’ve got some homebrew hardware and post processing chops you can grab your own images from these weather satellites.

The first step is data acquisition. [hpux735] used a software defined radio receiver that he built from a kit. This makes us think back to the software-radio project that [Jeri Ellsworth] built using an FPGA–could that be adapted for this purpose? But we digress. To record the incoming data a Mac program called DSP Radio was used. Once you do capture an audio sample, you’ll need something to turn it into an image. It just so happens there’s a program specifically for weather image decoding called WXtoImg, and another which runs under Linux called WXAPT. Throw in a little post processing, Robert’s your mother’s brother, and you’ve got the image seen above.

[Hpux735] mentioned that he’s working on a post about the antenna he built for the project and has future plans for an automated system where he’ll have a webpage that always shows the most current image. We’re looking forward hearing about that.

[Sebastian] wrote in to share his web site, where he has a bunch of different electronics projects. After looking through them, we found a pair that we thought you might find interesting.

The first project is a homebrew weather monitoring station that [Sebastian] put together. He designed a weather shield, incorporating humidity, pressure and light sensors, along with digital I/O ports for monitoring an anemometer. The entire setup is powered using solar panels, and data is relayed to his computer via an Xbee.

The second item that caught our eye was a digital camera pan and tilt rig. The system was built using a Lynxmotion pan and tilt kit, which is controlled by an Arduino. The code he provides allows him to capture very large composite images without having to spend too much time “sewing” them together. While this second project mostly consists of schematics for a base plate and pan/tilt code, it struck us as something that could be very useful for any budding photographers looking to take panoramic shots.

All of the schematics and code for his projects are available on his site, so be sure to look around – you might find something interesting!

[Sean_Carney] build this clock that tells the weather instead of the time. The two hands display the current conditions and the temperature. Forty below zero seems amazingly cold if you’re on the Fahrenheit scale but [Sean's] from Winnipeg so he’s operating on the Celsius side of things.

Two servos move the hands to match the data scraped off of the Internet. An Arduino does the scraping with the help of an Ethernet shield. This reminds us of the Harry Potter clock that tells a persons location.

[via Flickr]

Ever wanted to be able to launch a balloon into space, track its location via GPS, take some photographs of the curvature of the earth, and recover the balloon, all for the low low cost of $150? [Oliver Yeh] sent in his teams project, Icarus, which does just that. The group of MIT students found that they could use a weather balloon filled with helium to reach heights of around 20 miles above the earth;  their particular balloon achieved 93,000 feet (17.5 miles). Then, utilizing only off the shelf components with no soldering, conjured up a GPS tracker using a Motorola i290 Prepaid Cellphone. They then used a Canon A470 loaded with the chdk open source firmware to take pictures. After seeing the results of their launch, the team hopes that this could rejuvenate interests in science and the arts.

Another Cornell final project, Weather Canvas aims to make watching the weather a little more pleasant. Data is captured via a thermometer, humidity sensor, anemometer, and a Hotwheels radar gun turned precipitation sensor. Once it’s captured, it’s transmitted to the LED matrix inside which displays pretty patterns to convey the weather conditions. They have set images, like icons, that mean different things.

This weather monitor can track pressure, temperature, and humidity and last several months on a pack of AA batteries. It has a PIC18f452 to control all the bits, as well as some fancy power management to get the most out of the batteries as possible. The screen displays the highest and lowest temperatures of the last 42 hours as well as having options to display all other sensor input, updated every minute or so. You can get the full schematic and parts list on the project site.

[via YourITronics]

[Fickara] sent in his AVR interface(in Italian) for an Oregon Scientific remote weather station. Thanks to the AVR, data is output via RS232. There are quite a few less expensive weather stations – usually PC output models are over $100, so this could be pretty handy. His page has several other projects including an oscope clock, POV on a stick, etc.