kiwiwfrecorder.py connects both to the 'SND' and the 'W/F' websocket streams. The 'W/F' stream contains sequence numbers for each waterfall line which are used to synchronize the waterfall to the audio data. These sequence numbers can also be used to attach to each waterfall line a corresponding GNSS time tag obtained from the 'SND' stream. As the waterfall data can arrive before or after the audio data, both are combined in a third thread using python Queues for thread-safe communication.
About half an hour of waterfall data was recorded on the AB1LD KiwiSDR using the highest KiwiSDR waterfall speed which turns out to provide waterfall data about for each SND frame, i.e, each 512/12000 seconds. Thanks to the owner for setting up this KiwiSDR and allowing unrestricted access!.
Then the recorded waterfall data (saved in a .npy formatted file) was rebinned in time to 1024/12000 second bins and exported as a .png file. Switching from python to octave, a search for chirp sounders was performed for chirp rates from 80 kHz/s to 130 kHz/sec in steps of 1 kHz/sec: for each chirp rate and for each start time the content of the waterfall bins was summed up along the corresponding line (Hough transform).
Two chirp sounders were found, each having a repetition rate of 720 seconds (12 minutes) with chirp rates of 82 kHz/sec and 100 kHz/sec, respectively. It might be interesting that this list of chirp sounders contains entries for three chirps sounders with 720 second periods located in Norfolk, VA, Kingsville, TX, and in Puerto Rico.
The plots below show zoomed waterfall diagrams around the chirps and on the bottom panel the result of the chirp search, i.e, the sums of waterfall bins along lines with a given slope.
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| 1st chirp sounder detected using the AB1LD KiwiSDR |
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| 2nd chirp sounder detected using the AB1LD KiwiSDD |
