RAMBo is a homemade, low cost project born in Bologna (Italy). Its goal is the observation and the automatic recording of meteor activity.
Like other European observatories, also RAMBo uses a military radar transmitter that is continuously on air in VHF at great power: it is located in Graves, near Dijon, in France. It is built for satellites and for aircraft position control.
The RAMBo receiving set up is composed of a Yagi directive antenna (10 elements) pointed in azimuth in the direction of the transmitter (300°), and in declination about 25 degrees above the horizon. Its polarization is vertical.
Given the characteristics of the antenna (high directivity), the area of the sky that is investigated consists of a twenty per thirty square degrees area, above the Alps, roughly vertically on the Matterhorn.
The receiver is a Yaesu 897 tuned in SSB (Single Side Band) about 1000 Hz below the Graves carrier.
Sound analysis and data recording are both made with Arduino, the well-known low cost microprocessor of the “Internet of Things” (IoT) through a program written by us.
- For every meteor echo we record:
- Progressive event number;
- Hourly number;
- Date and time (UT);
- Echo length (milliseconds);
- Echo amplitude (millivolts);
- A number proportional to the rise time.
For each echo RAMBo realizes a data string CSV type (common delimited values) containing the six above listed informations. Every night at 18 U.T. Arduino sends the file via the web to a cloud site, so that it can be analyzed at home.
After three years of trials and improving we arrived at the sixth version. Now the results are good and reliable. Who need to know more about us, can visit our website: www.ramboms.com where you can find the project history, see our data, and get to know our amateur team.
