No financial or other relationship with this company—just a very satisfied customer.
If you haven’t seen the Geochron 4K clock then you’re in for a real treat. Basically a small computer in a box, it features a HMDI output capable of feeding 4K resolution video to a monitor of your choice.
Like its mechanical namesake, it displays a world map segmented into 24 hour time zones, and clearly display the “gray line” terminator as day turns into darkness.
But for satellite operators it can do so much more. It also can access the Internet to get real-time updates on a number of things—including amateur satellites. That’s right, you can watch the next pass of AO-91 or SO-50 approach your home QTH on a beautiful 70” 4K TV in real time.
The effect is hypnotic. Soon to come will be even more live overlays including weather, maidenhead grid maps, propagation reports, etc.
You can even add 3-D “pins” in various colors to mark any location on earth, and label them as you see fit. At just under $400 dollars, it makes a great present. Pair it with a large HD or 4K monitor and it’s the perfect compliment to any satellite operators shack.
https://www.geochron.com/product/4k/
73,
Les Rayburn, N1LF Maylene, AL EM63nf AMSAT #38965, ARRL Life Member, CVHS Life Member, SVHF Member
How do you get the amsat overlays? Can you send a pic of what they look like?
thanks,
Bob W7OTJ
On Sat, Apr 6, 2019 at 8:25 AM Les Rayburn via AMSAT-BB amsat-bb@amsat.org wrote:
No financial or other relationship with this company—just a very satisfied customer.
If you haven’t seen the Geochron 4K clock then you’re in for a real treat. Basically a small computer in a box, it features a HMDI output capable of feeding 4K resolution video to a monitor of your choice.
Like its mechanical namesake, it displays a world map segmented into 24 hour time zones, and clearly display the “gray line” terminator as day turns into darkness.
But for satellite operators it can do so much more. It also can access the Internet to get real-time updates on a number of things—including amateur satellites. That’s right, you can watch the next pass of AO-91 or SO-50 approach your home QTH on a beautiful 70” 4K TV in real time.
The effect is hypnotic. Soon to come will be even more live overlays including weather, maidenhead grid maps, propagation reports, etc.
You can even add 3-D “pins” in various colors to mark any location on earth, and label them as you see fit. At just under $400 dollars, it makes a great present. Pair it with a large HD or 4K monitor and it’s the perfect compliment to any satellite operators shack.
https://www.geochron.com/product/4k/
73,
Les Rayburn, N1LF Maylene, AL EM63nf AMSAT #38965, ARRL Life Member, CVHS Life Member, SVHF Member
Sent via AMSAT-BB@amsat.org. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum available to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official views of AMSAT-NA. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: https://www.amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
I should have said that the satellite overlay ships already loaded into the software. You merely have to select the overlay during set-up. In addition to the amateur birds, you can overlay military satellites, GPS, Irridium, etc.
Since the overlays are live from the Internet, keps are updated automatically. I compared the orbits to the data from SatPC32 and everything tracks correctly.
At the moment, the overlay only includes the track of the satellite and some other data points like altitude but new live data overlays are being produced frequently. I won’t be surprised to find one soon that includes the footprint of each satellite.
Also Geochron is going to offer an SDK for those who want to develop their own overlays. Virtually any real-time data can be used to create new layers to go over the maps.
I will try to take some photos tomorrow and share them.
73,
Les Rayburn, N1LF Maylene, AL EM63nf AMSAT #38965, ARRL Life Member, CVHS Life Member, SVHF Member
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Les Rayburn