More on Ground Station Satellite Tracking:

March 18, 2026

Ground Station: An Open Source SDR Orchestration Platform for Satellite Tracking and Decoding

Over on GitHub, we've seen the release of a new program simply called "Ground Station", described as a full-featured, open-source software solution for satellite tracking and radio communication.

The software presents as a web-based UI that allows users to manage satellite passes, view SDR waterfall data, decode basic signals such as GMSK telemetry, view telemetry packets, synchronize TLEs, manage multiple SDR devices, browse downloaded weather imagery, monitor DSP performance, and interface with antenna rotators.

Unlike tools such as SatDump, which focus primarily on signal processing and decoding, Ground Station acts as a higher-level orchestration platform. It automates the full workflow, handling pass prediction, SDR control, recording, and decoding, and integrates with SatDump for more complex protocols like weather satellite image decoding.

While SatDump does include some tracking and automation features, Ground Station takes this further with support for multiple SDRs, coordination across multiple stations, and a centralized management interface. It also includes an interesting AI-based speech-to-text feature for transcribing amateur satellite voice communications.

This could be a great tool to use alongside our Discovery Dish and Discovery Drive antenna rotator!

https://www.rtl-sdr.com/ground-station-an-open-source-sdr-orchestration-platform-for-satellite-tracking-and-decoding/