TELANGANA: A Class 12 student in Hyderabad, Telangana has built a satellite receiver that pulls cloud images directly from passing weather satellites, with no internet or mobile network needed.
Aagam Jain, a Grade 12 IB student and Head Boy at Indus International School, built the device, named SummitSathi, from off-the-shelf components at about Rs 68,000 a unit. Three units are to be deployed across 10 villages in the Seraj valley of Himachal Pradesh's Mandi district, reaching more than 1,000 residents, with three local operators already trained to run them.
The idea came from a trek near Dehradun, where poor connectivity left him without weather information. Jain said he wanted to see how accessible technology could help remote communities get weather information when networks fail.
The project team says the device is not a cloudburst prediction system and does not replace official forecasts or emergency warnings.
(with inputs from the respective school and media agency)