I have tried many software programs for capturing meteor scatter off a TV station in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. Argo was the easiest to use, but the one I really wanted to use is Echoes. The nice thing about Echoes is its natively set up to run with the RTL-SDR, provided you have the Zadig USB driver installing. Figuring out the settings for Echoes took quite a bit of trial and error. Some key points to keep in mind when setting it up:
- In order to enable snapshots the "Stop After" setting must be non-zero.
- Watch the spectral ribbon on the right for a while and note the "Difference" value during meteor pings, then set "Peak Upper Threshold" to a dB or so below that.
- Likewise note the nominal value of the "Difference" and then set "Peak Lower Threshold" halfway between the "Peak Upper Threshold" and nominal value.
These snapshots show the various settings:
