Andreas Spiess Tracks Weather Balloons with a TTGO LoRa Board and RTL-SDR

Earlier in August we posted about radiosondy.info and the MySondy radiosonde receiver. Radiosondy.info is an internet service that aggregates radiosonde weather balloon data received and decoded by RTL-SDR users all over the world. MySondy is a cheap TTGO LoRa receiver that is modified with custom firmware and combined with a companion Android app in order to create a portable radiosonde receiver. A radiosonde is a small sensor and radio package normally attached to a weather balloon. Meteorological agencies around the world typically launch two balloons a day from several locations to gather data for weather prediction. With cheap hardware like an RTL-SDR and the right decoding software it is possible to receive weather and GPS data from the weather balloons launched in your area. 

Over on his popular YouTube channel, Andreas Spiess "the guy with the Swiss accent" has uploaded a video featuring the RadioSondy and the MySondy receiver projects. In the video Andreas first explains what a radiosonde is, and who launches them. He goes on to show the RadioSondy website and how to track balloons on it. He then shows the portable MySondy receiver for tracking radiosondes, before finally showing how to set up a permanent fixed ground station with RTL-SDR and Raspberry Pi for contributing to the RadioSondy aggregation website.

In amongst the demonstrations he also goes on several hunts for weather balloons that have landed near him, ultimately recovering two radiosondes and one intact balloon. The radiosondes were initially tracked with the RadioSondy fixed RTL-SDR ground stations, then when in the vicinity of the landed balloon pinpointed and found with the MySondy hardware.