#"weather"

2 articles tagged with ""weather""

Chasing Weather Balloons with a $25 Dongle: Radiosonde Hunting is the Nerdiest Treasure Hunt 🎈

Weather services launch balloons twice a day carrying sensors that radio back temperature, humidity, and GPS data. You can decode all of it with RTL-SDR — and some people actually go find the fallen balloons. I became one of those people.

Mar 12, 2026

"rf""sdr""wireless"

10 min read

Radiosonde Hunting: Chasing Weather Balloons Falling from the Edge of Space 🎈📡

Twice a day, weather services launch balloons to the edge of space, each carrying a transmitter broadcasting GPS, temperature, and pressure data in the clear. With a $20 RTL-SDR, you can decode the signal, predict where the hardware lands, and go pick it up. It's geocaching if geocaching involved actual space hardware falling out of the sky.

Feb 25, 2026