SSTV is an amateur radio method of sending images using a transmitter and radio receiver that’s still in use today! The older transmission mode is not used a lot, but there have been some software improvements and updates that allow it’s use on devices other than PCs and you can occasionally hear it used with satellites and the International Space Station (ISS).

There are 2 programs we’ve used for transmitting and receiving SSTV transmissions: MMSSTV and YONIQ.
– MMSTV is perhaps the original software for amateur radio SSTV, but it is a pretty old windows program that hasn’t been updated since 2010. Still works however and what we first used for receiving transmissions from the International Space Station.
– YONIQ is an update of the original MMSSTV which includes many improvements, new features, and really can be considered a different program.
There are many other programs that will also receive and transmit SSTV images.

More recently we’ve been using our cell phones to decode/code SSTV images. If you’d like to experiment with that, so far we’ve tried Robot36 for decoding and SSTV Encoder for coding an image from your phone. Both are pretty simple applications, but seem to get the job done and convenient to use from your cell phone.

Last updated on 3/12/24.