KrakenRF Set to Begin Crowdfunding Dish Antenna for Weather Satellite Monitoring

KrakenRF first made a splash in the SDR community a couple years ago with the release of their KrakenSDR, a five-channel coherent software-defined radio (SDR). Using the popular R820T2 tuner chip found in most of the RTL-SDR radios the KrakenSDR achieves a tuning range from 24MHz to 1766MHz and excels in applications such as tracking, beamforming, and radio direction finding. Now, the same team is back and soon looking to begin crowdfunding for their next SDR piece of equipment: the Discovery Dish. The Discovery Dish is a parabolic dish antenna optimized for weather satellite reception and hydrogen line radio astronomy.

Parabolic dish antennas are well known for their use in satellite TV applications. The “satellite dish” antennas commonly found on homes are highly directional antennas that offer some of the highest gains when compared to alternative antenna options. Their high directionality means they must be pointed at the source of the transmission. As a result, they do a great job receiving wireless signals in the direction they are pointing and rejecting wireless signals from other directions. Furthermore, they are also generally used at higher frequencies. This allows their size to be more manageable while increasing the range of reception of the wireless system as well.

The Discovery Dish is a 65-centimeter aluminum dish designed to operate around frequencies of 1.69GHz. This makes it well suited for receiving various signals from weather satellites such as GOES HRIT, GK-2A LRIT, FengYun LRIT, NOAA HRPT, and Meteor M2 HRPT. In addition, it contains an active line feed with a Qorvo QPL9547 low noise amplifier (LNA). Placing the LNA at the beginning of the line feed helps reduce insertion loss and noise contribution from the cabling needed to connect the antenna to a radio. It also features filtering and a bias tee.

Potential add-on options include a line feed optimized for 1.42GHz reception which can be used for hydrogen line astronomy. Additionally, a fully metal electronics enclosure will be offered which can be used to house devices such as a Raspberry Pi, SDR, or PoE splitter. The fully metal enclosure can keep electronics safe in outdoor environments while also acting as a Faraday cage to keep any electromagnetic interference from disturbing the parabolic dish operation.

The Discovery Dish is set to launch soon on Crowd Supply. Current dish prototypes are shown as a single parabolic dish structure, however it is mentioned that when the project gets funded the dish will be shipped out as a three-piece set. This will allow for easier shipping and storing. The device has also been demonstrated to work with common open source software packages such as Goestools and SatDump.

For further information and updates on the status, check out the Discovery Dish over on its Crowd Supply page.