sidmon - SID monitoring software

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Nathan Towne

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Mar 7, 2022, 3:03:41 PM3/7/22
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For SID (sudden ionospheric disturbance) observers, I a releasing sidmon, a code that records submarine-transmitter intensities and signal directions as a means to detect SIDs.  It captures samples from sound cards from one or two loop antennae.  It has a spectral-peak measurement algorithm that measures and excludes the background intensity, and also a feature for excluding spectral outliers such as line harmonics.  A veto feature detects and excludes Fourier frames with excess intensity, which helps exclude noise spikes.  These features allow lower-noise intensity and direction measurements, such as the attached graph for NML.  The blue trace is intensity while the red trace is direction in degrees relative to the pointing.

Direction detection works by coherently combining streams from two antennae to allow pointing of the antenna - a pointing for each monitored transmitter.  In this way, this 'primary' pointing sees the full intensity of each transmitter, allowing a sort of isotropic sensitivity not possible with one antenna.  A simultaneous orthogonal pointing allows measurement of direction. 

sidmon version 2 was developed in 2017, which is able to measure intensities of multiple transmitters.  sidmon 3 is a more recent development.  I am getting good results now with direction sensitivity of ~0.1° with one minute integrations and a strong signal.

sidmon runs on linux.  Its repository is under the name sidmon3 at sourceforge.net.  If down loading using the git clone command, specify the '-b correlate' switch to get the correct branch, and the '--single-branch' switch, e.g.,

git clone -b correlate --single -branch ssh://tow...@git.code.sf.net/p/sidmon3/code sidmon

After downloading, documentation is in the doc subdirectory in the files

  • sidmon2.html - for sidmon generally, excluding direction capability,
  • sidmon3.html - specific to the direction capability, and
  • RaspberryPi.html - for setting up an RPi.

Start with the first.  The last for RPi setup is written in an elementary style fitting my linux level.  Most of its content applies to other linux platforms, and I've run sidmon on a linux x64 computer as well as an RPi.  On an RPi 4B, cpu usage is less than 10% when measuring direction (dual audio channel) as well as intensity.  I've tested sidmon with Asus Xonar models U5 and U7 USB sound cards, the StarTech ICUSBAUDIO2D, and the Realtek ALC221 sound chip of my linux desktop.

There are example data files and graphs of data at the link

http://towne56.ownmail.net/sidmon/

Nathan
20220306towne18NPM.png

kevin kell

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Mar 7, 2022, 7:03:21 PM3/7/22
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Many thanks for this... we've been struggling for some time with older versions of code and am looking forward to trying this out in the near future!

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Franck Durand

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Mar 8, 2022, 7:22:06 AM3/8/22
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Dear Nathan Towne, 

Thanks for your work, I was looking for a solution in order to move my own system devlopped under labview software to Linux standalone system, I got It now 👍 thanks again. 
I expect to run a system in a quiete area, this has to be found to make a good 24h/24 observatory here in France. 
I will share this information in my ELF VLF presentation dedicated to ham radio planned I  on April. 

I will try on my raspberry pi4 maybe in April or may. 

Best regards
73's 
Franck, F4iew 

Nathan Towne

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Mar 8, 2022, 10:39:15 AM3/8/22
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Let me know if you need assistance.

Nathan

On 3/7/22 2:49 PM, kevin kell wrote:

Many thanks for this... we've been struggling for some time with older versions of code and am looking forward to trying this out in the near future!


On 2022-03-07 3:03 PM, Nathan Towne wrote:

For SID (sudden ionospheric disturbance) observers, I a releasing sidmon, a code that records submarine-transmitter intensities and signal directions as a means to detect SIDs.  It captures samples from sound cards from one or two loop antennae.  It has a spectral-peak measurement algorithm that measures and excludes the background intensity, and also a feature for excluding spectral outliers such as line harmonics.  A veto feature detects and excludes Fourier frames with excess intensity, which helps exclude noise spikes.  These features allow lower-noise intensity and direction measurements, such as the attached graph for NML.  The blue trace is intensity while the red trace is direction in degrees relative to the pointing.

Direction detection works by coherently combining streams from two antennae to allow pointing of the antenna - a pointing for each monitored transmitter.  In this way, this 'primary' pointing sees the full intensity of each transmitter, allowing a sort of isotropic sensitivity not possible with one antenna.  A simultaneous orthogonal pointing allows measurement of direction. 

sidmon version 2 was developed in 2017, which is able to measure intensities of multiple transmitters.  sidmon 3 is a more recent development.  I am getting good results now with direction sensitivity of ~0.1° with one minute integrations and a strong signal.

sidmon runs on linux.  Its repository is under the name sidmon3 at sourceforge.net.  If down loading using the git clone command, specify the '-b correlate' switch to get the correct branch, and the '--single-branch' switch, e.g.,

git clone -b correlate --single -branch ssh://tow...@git.code.sf.net/p/sidmon3/code sidmon

After downloading, documentation is in the doc subdirectory in the files

  • sidmon2.html - for sidmon generally, excluding direction capability,
  • sidmon3.html - specific to the direction capability, and
  • RaspberryPi.html - for setting up an RPi.

Start with the first.  The last for RPi setup is written in an elementary style fitting my linux level.  Most of its content applies to other linux platforms, and I've run sidmon on a linux x64 computer as well as an RPi.  On an RPi 4B, cpu usage is less than 10% when measuring direction (dual audio channel) as well as intensity.  I've tested sidmon with Asus Xonar models U5 and U7 USB sound cards, the StarTech ICUSBAUDIO2D, and the Realtek ALC221 sound chip of my linux desktop.

There are example data files and graphs of data at the link

http://towne56.ownmail.net/sidmon/

Nathan
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Kevin Kell
Starlightcascade.ca Gardens & Observatory just outside Yarker Ontario Canada
Heirloom seed saver and grower of tomatos and garlic, Member L&A Hort, NFU
Recreational astronomer, Member AAVSO, ALPO, BAA, NFU, SARA, The RASC - Kingston Centre (Editor, Equipment Coordinator)
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Larry Mayfield

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Mar 8, 2022, 5:30:18 PM3/8/22
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Nathan, I am interested in your algorithm  for measuring spectral peaks. Is that code available somewhere? What was it coded in?

 

Thank, you,

 

Larry

Pahrump, NV

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Nathan Towne

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Mar 8, 2022, 8:12:24 PM3/8/22
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Larry,

It is coded in python and among the source files in the repository.  The relevant file is OrthPoly.py, and the background method.  The idea is to fit a segment of spectrum containing one or more transmitter lines to a low-order polynomial to capture the background intensity, and a known function representing line position and shape for the each transmitter.  This done in a single fitting process.  The fitting is in more than one recursive step to detect and exclude spectral points that deviate from the fit with progressively tighter criterion.  Line intensities are the fitting coefficients. 

It cannot work in every EMI environment, but I have examples where there is a forest of intense line harmonics that are nicely ignored.   They just need to be sufficiently sparse.  It is a home-made algorithm, but I think it fits somewhere into a body of statistical theories in the literature about outliers.

Nathan

Larry Mayfield

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Mar 9, 2022, 9:48:22 AM3/9/22
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Nathan, thanks for the information. I think I might be able to use what you mentioned for my project but needs are quite a bit different than I thought.   I am seeking maximum and minimum of a small range of signal frequencies.  But, you have clued me in on attacking the issue.

 

Many thanks!

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Kevin Kell

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Apr 16, 2022, 7:17:38 PM4/16/22
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Greetings! And thank you for the code update.  We have pulled the old raspbi sd card and installed a new one with the latest and greatest raspian with GUI.  It is connected to the Supersid receiver and we are ready for code.
So we tried:

>sidmon runs on linux.  Its repository is under the name sidmon3 at sourceforge.net.  If down loading using the git clone command, specify the '-b correlate' >switch to get the correct branch, and the '--single-branch' switch, e.g.,

>git clone -b correlate --single -branch ssh://tow...@git.code.sf.net/p/sidmon3/code sidmon

and we ran into a problem :(  Someone wants a password.  We tried some obvious ones but they all failed.

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ sudo git clone -b correlate --single -branch ssh://tow...@git.code.sf.net/p/sidmon3/code sidmon
Cloning into 'sidmon'...
Password:

So.. off to sourceforge (from a windows desktop) to download the 13 python files and 17 documentation files and will transfer them to the  supersidpi and go from there...  wish us luck!

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Nathan Towne

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Apr 17, 2022, 5:58:56 PM4/17/22
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Sorry, the ssh link is apparently a login link.  Try this from your RPi's command line:

git clone -b correlate --single-branch https://git.code.sf.net/p/sidmon3/code sidmon

The last 'sidmon' is the directory created and can be anything.

cd to the directory and check with

$ git status
On branch correlate
Your branch is up to date with 'origin/correlate'.

nothing to commit, working tree clean

It should not say

On branch master

That is the wrong branch.

Nathan

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