Lear 45 Home Cockpit Flight Simulator- Live

This week I was able to join the Adafruit Live Show called Show and Tell via G+ hangouts.  Each week they do great live broadcasts for all of us “makers” and hobbyists.

As I had just done some work to the flight simulator this week and finally got a bunch of systems back online (it runs 5 PCs and several I/O boards + Arduinos) I thought I’d share it live.

Here is my appearance:

And here is some more comments from Phil and LadyAda on the Ask and Engineer Live show later that night:

 

Here is my latest YouTube update video on the simulator:

Cheers

Eric was live on Adafruit Show and Tell!

Last week I was lucky enough to join the Adafruit Show and Tell live show.  If you haven’t seen it before- each week Adafruit hosts multiple live shows and G+ hangout for makers, inventors and hobbyists. I was even lucky enough to become the thumbnail for their video:

adafruit
Eric William live on Adafruit G+ hangout

If you didn’t catch the video you can see it here:

As well during the following Adafruit Ask an Engineer show LadyAda (Limor) mentioned the projects in a quick recap here:

 

Russian Weather Satellite with SDR

A while back I discovered the new Russian weather satellite Meteor-M2 and decided I simply must find a way to receive the bird with my SDR devices.

Thanks to a couple posts over at http://www.rtl-sdr.com/ I was able to receive the satellite and decode the images.  Here are two of my recent images.  I’ll post up a video on this soon!

Meteor M2 weather satellite image
Meteor M2 weather satellite image Great Lakes North America

 

Meteor M2 Satellite SDR
Meteor M2 Satellite SDR

Meteor_001.raw_122

 

Meteor M2 weather satellite image
Meteor M2 weather satellite image- Great Lakes covered in a soup of cloud
Weather Satellite Tracking with Orbitron
Weather Satellite Tracking with Orbitron

 

High Altitude Balloon Flight Video is Complete!

Finally after some delay I was able to compile the 20+ Gigs of video into an under 5 minute flight.  We could not have been happier with the results despite having simultaneous dual system tracking failure and missing our target altitude by about 20,000 feet.

All systems were recovered and can be re-used along with our newly acquired knowledge.  The next flight will be even better.

Enjoy!

<iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”//www.youtube.com/embed/nw7q5mSDCwA” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>

Live G+ Hangout and UpConverter case Giveaway!

Last night I tried my first YouTube live broadcast and it was amazing!  I got to spend an hour with a few subscribers/members of the mkme.org community and had a blast!

I learned a few things about my settings and hardware so I decided to try it again this coming Monday at 7:00 pm Eastern time.  During this broadcast I will do the draw for the 3D printed case giveaway live on the air- with a small surprise announcement.

hope you can join!  Post a comment on the event if you would like to join the hangout live on the air.  You can always watch the broadcast live on G+ or YouTube as well.
Here is the giveaway info if you haven’t entered already:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kieSDm5g0cc

Here is the G+ event page.  look forward to seeing you!

http://plus.google.com/u/0/events/ccscj4k50453e5j5tj3cjqmruq0

 

Watch on YouTube here:

http://youtu.be/DPF8p1uZ-UE

Cheers!

NOAA Weather Satellite Images With Cheap SDR Receiver

This morning I decided to fire up the ultra cheap software defined radio (DVB-T dongle) so my PC could grab some weather satellite photos from the NOAA satellites.

If you haven’t heard- you can now buy a $10 USB device which functions as an all band radio receiver.  Tonnes of freeware programs now exist to work with these signals.  One fun use is decoding the weather images directly from the satellites.  It is really a simple process and your PC can stitch together multiple images to cover a large portion of any area.

Here is a composite image which is actually 3 satellite passes today which were automatically stitched together and displayed.  Not too bad for a $10 USB stick 🙂

NOAA Weather satellite software defined radio

I am using a commercial QFH antenna but you can easily make your own as well.  If you haven’t already- check out my videos on the cheap software defined radios- the number of things we can receive is quite incredible!

Here is the website which my receiver automatically updates when I have it configured to receive the NOAA images.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/89861404/WXtoImg/index.html

Here are the tutorial videos I made so anyone can use these little software defined radios to receive satellite weather transmission easily.

Cheers!