Linux Ham Radio Space Communication Software

satcom:
satcom is a ncurses console application for satellite tracking, with built-in rotor/transceiver control (for the Yaesu G5500 Az/El rotor and Ft-847 transceiver). satcom is based on the sgp4sdp4 package, which is a translation to C of the NORAD SGP4/SDP4 FORTRAN routines and Dr. Kelso's sgp4-plb26a Pascal library. satcom provides a lot of data regarding satellite position, azimuth, elevation, range, Doppler shift, illumination, AOS/LOS etc. It can automatically control transmitter and receiver separately for Doppler shift compensation and Tx/Rx tracking of frequency and mode, for easy operation even on LEO satellites. satcom can help with satellite QSO scheduling since it provides multi-location tracking data, including AOS overlaps, and multi-satellite tracking to provide data for all satellites in its database.

Manual Read more details on-line or download satcom's manual.

Package Download source package of satcom.

xsatcom:
xsatcom is a GTK+ version of satcom, but using tracking code adapted from "Revisiting Spacetrack Report #3" from the Center for Space and offering similar functions. Its main attraction is the more convenient and better-looking graphical user interface and operation in an X windows desktop environment.

Manual Read more details on-line or download xsatcom's manual.

Package Download source package of xsatcom.

Here are some screen shots of various xsatcom windows in action!
Click on the thumbnails for the full-sized images.

main Xsatcom Main window. It shows Observer Location & Date, Satellite Position, Rotor control and Transceiver control. multi-loc Xsatcom Multi-Locations window. It shows the Satellite position for various locations.
multisat Xsatcom Multi Satellite window. It shows Position and Status data for various satellites.
 predict Xsatcom Satellite Pass Predictions window. It shows the Azimuth and Elevation profile of the current or next pass.

Interface application to Rockwell's Microtracker LP(tm) GPS module

rwgps:
rwgps is a ncurses console application for controlling and reading data from the Rockwell Microtracker LP(tm) GPS module. It uses the Binary data format of this module for both control and read-out and can issue most commands (Self-Test, Warm Start, Power Control etc) and read most of the available data sets (position co-ordinates, altitude, velocity, time and date, satellite status etc). Assuming the Microtracker LP(tm) is still available these days (fall 2005) and at a reasonable price, code from rwgps could be used for some GPS project like APRS etc.

Manual Read more details on-line or download rwgps's manual.

Package Download source package of rwgps.