Server Development Environment
Contents
What is the purpose of the development environment?
Like many innovative projects, there needs to be a bit of testing. The development environment is a place to iron out all the creases in your system before it is moved to the Production Environment. The production environment is essentially fully developed ground stations that only require deploying. Access to it is limited, this is not the case with the development environment.
How do I get access and create a ground station?
The Development Network has the usual sign up buttons, create your account and await confirmation.
Creating a ground station
There is some essential information that is required for the ground station, mainly:
- Where is the station, including the height above ground level and maidenhead locator?
- What is the set up? Static or rotator?
- What type of antennas does the station have?
All this information is then held on the network to help determine which satellites can be received by your station and are therefore available for all users to schedule passes on your ground station. For example, you would like to receive the latest NOAA APT weather images which are VHF transmissions. You could schedule an observation with your ground station or multiple ground stations in order to determine if your set up has comparable performance. Without the station detail this would not be possible. The image below is a typical ground station
Observing a pass
The centre point of the system is the ability to schedule a pass. You'll find all the information about scheduling and how to assess the quality of the observation as part of scheduling your first observation.
