Downloading Images from Russian Satellite 

Imagine accessing a satellite to see what the agencies are trying to spy on, only to reveal seconds later a satellite photo of your exact house.

That ackward feeling you get when you try to tap into a Russian weather satelite, and it pulls up someone's game of Defcon. Then the air raid siren starts sounding outside...

That shifting signal appears to be the doppler of the signal as the sat breaks horizon and gets closer in orbit. Thats another reason for using helical antennas for sat work

This is the kind of person you want to be friends with. Probably likes craft beer, probably has great conversation, probably joins you for tabletop gaming and is a competent and polite player.

I take back my statement on the a/c suit video: THIS is how urban legends/creepypastas start. Downloading mysterious signals from Russian satellites, that's the sort of thing a protagonist does before he finds out there's a giant monster that's disguised itself as a city and it's eating people but the government is covering it up but the Russian sat shows it for what it is and then someone from a three-letter agency shows up. Then the world ends, usually.

This is definitely one of my new favorite channels, linux, old computers, doing sketchy stuff with satellites using stuff from your garage, perfection Edit: people from my friend groups keep finding this video and comment because they are also weird nerds, hello weird nerd friends

I want to say that in Russia it has recently been a very popular topic to receive images from NOAA satellites. Everyone who bought an SDR receiver for himself, besides listening to military negotiations, watched satellite images.

flat earthers screaming rn

the drift of the signal you're referring to at 1:40 ish is partially caused by a phenomanon called Doppler shift as well as refraction of the signal by the atmosphere, it's being broadcast while it's moving towards you which causes the signal to effectively be squished and therefor appear to be broadcasting on a higher frequency. You might see it do the opposite as it goes out of range. Idk if you mention that I just saw this.

I believe one of the Meteor-M satellites was struck by a micrometeoroid or space debris and lost its primary temperature control loop. It also started tumbling but they were able to recover it partially. It's been half-dead since then. Maybe it's the satellite that you picked up: It would explain the low signal strenght, broken image and not-quite-top-down camera angle.

I have worked in earth and space science education for years, including many years as a planetarium director, before becoming a RU-vid creator, and I've never noticed that giant impact crater in Wisconsin before now. I learned a lot in this video aside from the crater, but darn I can't believe I never knew about that crater until tonight. Thanks, man!

Image quality on satellites launched between 1980 and '93, it's surprisingly good, for a weather satelite. I wasn't expecting it to be such. And of course, it's obligatory to use sketchy linux programs nad mysterious steps when operating on Russian satellites, how else would you have fun

I seriously have no idea what you are doing or how you are doing it but this is amazing. I'm going to keep watching. I love how you go about building so much from scrap. I think that is a sign of true passion and intelligence on a subject. Kudos! Short storytime. Years ago I broke my leg in a bad way. I was stuck in my house for 6~8 weeks with no internet or cable. I watched a video using my cell data of how to build a digital t.v. antenna for local channels. The only part I had was the coaxial matching adapter. I'm not even sure why I decided to keep that thing all of those years but I'm glad I did. I thought it was called a bohm or something like that but I must have imagined that part. After digging around I found some 14 gauge copper wire from some old romex, two of those cooling racks for baking cookies, some drywall screws with washers and a 2×4 to mount everything on. It looked like something out of Nikola Tesla's lab hanging from the ceiling. I was blown away by how well it worked. Almost 30 local channels in clear digital. From then on I at least had something to watch. Your channel reminds me of that. Having the knowledge and the resourceful nature to do so is something you really can't learn in school. Thank you and keep up the good work. Be well and good day! -Sputnik

This is the content RU-vid needs to recommend to me more, genuinely intriguing DIY tech content. Nice video man, you explained everything very well. Subscribed!

That signal that’s moving through the frequencies at 1:40 is likely blueshifting as a result of the Doppler effect as it closes its distance to you. You may see it start to do the opposite as it passes you.

First video I've seen on your channel now and I'm instantly subscribing, I want to watch more of this and maybe get into this sort of stuff myself, looks real fun and interesting to watch. Great video overall and amazing that you got a picture out of it!

this guy is awesome. he's still hearting comments even though the video is 2 years old

This is a dude you would seek out for a heist in GTA

I've been binge watching your videos for the last few hours and these satellite capturing projects are extremely interesting

В университете на магистратуре дипломную работу писал по обработке информации со спутников. А тут чувак просто для прикола этим занимается))

"They're a lot better quality than the NOAA satellites." That's because they're a "weather" satellite not a weather satellite.

You have great projects, keep up the good work! You are helping a lot of people get past block points and answering questions I didn’t know to ask. Thank you.

Nice video, I love consumer SDR stuff. 3:35 is Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (QPSK) demodulation. The received data represents the phase and amplitude of the signal. In QPSK, the phase of the signal is used to encode 1 of 4 phase states, represented by the four corners of the graph. Each state represents two bits (00,01,10 or 11). The closer the dots on your graph are to the four corners, the higher the signal-to-noise ratio and subsequently a lower bit-error rate.

Amazing project and results! I watched so raptly, just finding out you could successfully track the presence of a signal (first half of the video) was awesome, since I would think it's quite hard to even know if there is a signal going out or when, it all mixes with the background noise. Getting an identified signal is already a major achievement. When you successfully decoded a transmitted satellite image from it (second half of the video) it was jaw-dropping. I'm imagining reverse engineering an unknown format and how hard it would be, I can't even imagine reverse-engineering a format that that you have to find and filter out from background static, even if you did find random scripts online that helped. Epic achievement.

Yo, commenting from CA. I enjoy your content. Though its a bit hard to understand what is going on without prior knowledge, the bits that do shine through spark abundant curiosity. Keep it up hope to see how the channel evolves as you refine your method.

3:35 The flashing dots shown is a representation of the data "Constelation" as used by QAM "Quadrature Ampltude Modulation". In QAM 256 there's 256 combinations of phase & amplitude, so any digital value between 0 & 256 can be sent by one Symbol rather than 8 bits. It's a form of compression, each symbol represent 8 bits, which is far faster, but it does degrade noise tolerance as the number of Symbols &, hence, compression is increased.

I don’t know how I got here or what any of this is but it’s extremely interesting to watch. It’s always cool to learn about what people are doing, especially when it’s something completely foreign and new to me. Thanks for the content.

Wow! Around 30 years ago me and my friend found short article in our russian magazine - "how to receive satellite signal". I sure that was predecessor of Meteor M2. We have built double spiral antenna exactly as yours, my friend made a receiver, and I've developed sw for old russian replica of PDP-11, to process received signal. It was has not enought memory to draw image, and my software prints out scan lines received from that satellite directly to paper :):):)

Dude... Just found this channel. I am so impressed and love these topics.

Really love your work. I got my foundation licence (uk), about a year ago. Got into sdr but the lack of support when installing software made me walk away, alongside a very unwelcoming local radio community. I really enjoy watching what you do. I wish you lived in Bournemouth!!

Even the ice doesn't want to be in Chicago.

From a young man who feels like an octogenary for not knowing the most basic thing about coding and/or engineering, this is amazing. It's like magic, really, I could barely understand any of the technicalities, but it's interesting to see how we, humans, expand our ingenuity with time. Pretty cool.

Getting an image after all that is pretty amazing. Cool you found a better program too!

Cool project. I have a box of ham and sdr stuff I need to dig out , satellite stuff always intimidated me a little bit but thanks for demystifying things enough for me to give it another shot!

Computer: Hello Professor. Would you like to play a game? [B]ridge; [C]heckers; Ch[e]ss; [G]lobal Thermonuclear War?

Amazing!! It's great to see that there is more people with this kind of interest, you have a new suscriptor from Spain!

Didn't know this is possible. Please keep doing what you're doing.

THAT IS AWESOME! I love everything about this video, just subscribed and can't wait for more of your content. Keep it up! :)

This is the best intro scene to an apocalypse movie ever... :)

As soon as I feel smart I see people like this man who remind me there’s so much more to learn 😂

Damn.. how is this not on trending

This is something I'll set up one day, something about getting images from space directly from the source is really cool

I don't know literally any of this stuff but it's cool to see your enthusiasm for it

Totally fascinating and I can't believe I recognized my home State of Michigan in the pic before you pointed out Lake Superior!

I just want to say you are a legend for reading and responding to every comment in this 2 year old video

This guy is the person at the beginning of a sci fi movie that detect the weird signals coming from the alien mothership

That's awesome. I'd listen to satellite broadcasts on old radios. They could still pick them up. Such a buzz hearing those dead beeps and boops.

This looks awesome! Will check out your step by step blog. :)

I love finding niche channels like this so much

Да, именно на такие трюки нам теперь приходится идти каждый день, чтобы продлить подписку на спотифай, в то время как продажа углеводородов до сих пор не составляет труда

Your videos are truly inspiring, great video!

wow the detail is stunning

that meteor m2 LRPT Demodulation table at 3:59 looks very very similar to the QAM256 modulation constellation graph table that we use as ISP field technicians, those typically show actual bits of information in each little square since it would be 256 by 256 divided by 4 quadrants.. the more sporadic and spread apart the bits are from their little box margin of error is what results in a higher BER (Bit error rate) or to be simple.. data loss

Brilliant stuff, reminds me doing this stuff with my dad about 40 years ago using an MS-DOS computer and a homemade receiver and converter. Also had a 90cm dish for Meteosat 2. Hmmm, may go and find myself a receiver and see what I can do. Thanks for showing this to us!

This is a great image capture! At about 05:26 in the video, your cursor passes by the ORDOVICIAN ROCK ELM IMPACT STRUCTURE. An ancient meteor impact sight in western Wisconsin. The snow covering the region enhances the appearance showing the outline of the disturbance. It is thought that this may have been part of a single impact event with as many as four impacts sites spread out from Oklahoma panhandle to Thunder Bay, Ontario. *The Ordovician Period lasted almost 45 million years, beginning 488.3 million years ago and ending 443.7 million years ago.(*UCMP_Berkeley)

Why all the sudden is this coming up on my recommended? Why didn't this pop up 2 years ago. Such a cool video!

2:11 That's definitely a doppler shift of it moving away from you (shifting to lower frequency)

Im a complete layman and randomly found your channel but WOW this is fascinating!! Truly!!

Wouldn't want to be this guy's neighbor and catch an iskander missile while asleep

i never thought i'd be entranced by a video of a guy intercepting a russian satellite for 6 minutes, but here we are. subscribed :)

oh what a beautyfull hobby, hope i can make it at home This men: "so im usin my QFH GIGA DONT KNOW WHAT ANTENA"

My dear Friend the way you speaking explaining complicated frases that is why I really in love with your chanell.

Thank you for these teachings sir. Thank you for uploading.

Hi, very nice man) I'm aslo working with such sattelites like Meteors, Electro and Arktica in Russian Science Center of Hydrometeorology and it's really cool to work with)

This Is Actually So Cool! Congradulations. I Might Do It The Same And Maybe One Of My People Can Make This Process Much Easier For People Like You To Download And Decript The Signal To Image Or Other Information

Wow I love this. Subscribed. Dude, this is inspiring!

This video has everything I'm interested in. New public subscriber

unfourtunately my dude fell an window from a 27-story building on an "accident"

This is super cool mate, and you just gave me another raspberry pi project :D

Awesome, be the change you want to see and code the all in one meteor satellite decoding program!

Amazing. I didn’t know this was possible.

Some real Voices of the Void vibes off of this whole process wow.

What an interesting subject, thank you for sharing with us viewers.

I think this video is the coolest thing I've seen in a long time

If he's on US government lists, it's to make him merit-based job offers (pretty rare that government competes with industry but more common in STEM). If he wanted to, he could have a job having people in suits shaking his hand congratulating him for work he considered "meh". His mediocre is competitive with some of the smartest of the smartest, and I'm saying this not because of space and satellites per se. It's because of the RF engineering background. If he isn't one, he would take to it like a fish in water. And that is material so challenging to even study let alone apply practically... it makes electrical engineering graduate students cry and have sleepless nights. Designing complex IC is another. The people who tinker with stuff like this are the ones everybody wants to hire. This man has a good degree of knowledge in a LOT of EE/CS related disciplines, but it's the RF eng stuff that gets me. I'm basing all of this off of only 1 video, but I want to explain why this is really impressive beyond the obvious. He's working at a graduate level here, or future grad student. I don't know. But this is really impressive to me. Just last decade, I used to see a bunch of haggard EE grad students, some in PhD fellowships or other programs where they're expanding upon existing knowledge. The degree isnt what's important. This guy might have written a dissertation and 100 published papers, but if he did or didnt do that? Doesnt matter. You have to really love this stuff to do it at all. I'm saying this because just like my impression was formed in a short video, he's being even more humble than other smart people you see making these cool science project videos. When people look smart even next to people with people attaining graduate degrees in the same field, catches special attention and it has nothing to do with receiving signal from a russian satellite. Nope, it's all the setup he did before turning on the camera. He's working with some of the most abstract concepts in applied mathematics, imho. RF is one of the most abstract areas of EE, and everything is abstract. I'm talking about: you take your questions to maths people, not other engineers. In terms of difficulty: some of the math is so challenging that it reached what I call the "descent". If you look at some of math's greatest mysteries, it isn't pagefiller type cartoonish style. It's literally a few characters. The math side starts to LOOK simple again. What looks simpler to a 15 year old on a page is something that strikes fear in the heart of grad students. I don't wanna pry into this guy's knowledge or what he does besides making awesome YT videos, but this is especially difficult to make look easy. I guess I should watch more. Great attitude and approach to all this. It's crazy difficult even if it's just a fun project, so you seem like someone who's going to do very well whatever path you take. I hope you keep the great positive attitude! Thanks for showing us this project. It's sweet

Imagine flaming someone online and they send you a satellite image of your house

It is so impressive, congratulations.

I don't know how to react to this information. I had no idea this is possible and legal This video have actually put new knowledge in my brain. Thank you

Yo I worked as an imagery analyst in the usaf and this is pretty neat. Thanks for sharing!

This is a good manual on how to be added to russian kgb lists

Very interesting... A new project to try this summer.

I'm just seeing this for the first time. As a software engineer this is interesting to me because it seems as though it would technically be possible to stream live imagery from these satellites, but will perhaps require very powerful hardware to do so.

I feel like the Russians double the weather satellites as spy satellites with how good that image quality is

Have you uploaded the raw data online by any chance? If you have, I'd love to have a go at decoding it myself! I'd love to get into satellite tracking, but I'm not sure if I have enough time and commitment to realize the full setup, so I'd like to try processing the data first and see if I like it.

This was a very fun video; thank you for this!

In Russia, we didn't even know what kind of satellites we had. Thank you for enlightening me.😃

BRUH - THATS FUCKING WILD. This is where home hobbying hits the road. Just subbed.

Never thought you can actually sit there and decode the stuff that satellite is sending. The more you know

Very interesting stuff 👌 Keep up the good Work🤙

Wow! That's incredible, nicely done++

This is so cool, I think I just found a new hobby! Also subscribing for more low cost, hacky projects

3:37 yep, that looks like a constellation diagram, and you described how it works for QPSK. it's a pretty neat thingy to view noise-to-signal ratio for phase-modulated signals (can be also used for AM tho)

I honestly didn't think I would enjoy that as much as I did.

Ive got no idea whats going out but that was freaking awesome

4:24 best line ive ever heard

Linux and space just hits my nerd spots gotta search more into antennas and communication this stuff seems really interesting

Ay dog, I'm some guy who works wood in quebec, so my input doesn't mean much but PLEASE. Keep your beard the way it is, I've seen so many people trying to work it and noones managed it the way you have. It's a perfect fit, it compliments you and your personality so well. That's all man, keep on rocking on and well done

Really awesome! Thanks for sharing!

It's again recommended me by RU-vid, third time in a year. RU-vid, calm down.

It's sort of amazing there is lot (but not too many?) of people interested enough to engineering stuff to do all of these tricks! I can tell you there is lots and lots of people who are long gone ("TLDR") before doing even half of that engineer stuff, but don't let it discourage you. It's quite important there is enough good understanding available, about these things which eventually serve all the people when the actual applications for ordinary consumers are made also.