International Space Station Orbit Tracker
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- Опубликовано: 13 сен 2024
- There’s a growing movement of people who believe that our space agencies are underfunded (see: Penny4NASA) because humanity is just not paying enough attention to our present accomplishments and future plans in space exploration. Well, I know one way to direct attention to something: Point at it.
This is the first prototype of the International Space Station Desktop Orbit Tracker. The pointer is controlled by an ST Microelectronics Nucleo F401, an "arduino-compatible" development board, which performs the orbital propagation and coordinate system transformations using a ported version of the SGP4 model and drives an Adafruit motor shield.
A stepper motor controls the azimuth and a servo controls the elevation. The Station orbits the earth every 90 minutes so the speed of motion is roughly equivalent to a minute hand on a clock: slow enough that it’s not really interesting to watch, but fast enough that it’s in a new place every time you glance over.
I’ve got lots of ideas for extensions of this design, including:
- Trophies for aerospace-related awards
- Keeping track of cubesats in high school classrooms
- Amateur radio antenna mounts
- A children’s museum exhibit where you can select between satellites, planets, and landmarks to point at
- Making a huge one as an outdoor art installation.
For this prototype, though, I just wanted it to simply point: a reminder that the world’s full of incredible things if you just know what direction to look. Thanks for watching and let me know what you think!
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Now you need to get them to send one up to the ISS that always points back!
the iss doesn't rotate, so a pointer looking at earth would never move.
Well it does rotate, at exactly the right speed to be tidally locked. But relative to Earth's surface, no, it doesn't rotate.
+Forgi LaGeord I was talking about earth. if two pointer point to one another, and one is on earth, and the other doesn't move, it doesn't move relative to earth.
And hookup a laser and photocell so it can communicate back and forth with freaking laser beams! Hopefully not take out any planes in the process. I imagine you could get away with
The ISS is pretty close to earth, so I don't think just pointing down would be a good enough approximation as pointing to his actual location.
I did not skip ahead, and this is one of the coolest things I have seen. I would pay money for it, but probably not as much as you would need to charge to make a profit. I do go out every few months and watch the ISS go over. Thanks for sharing this.
How awesome would it be to have a large statue like this in a city!
I have taken Satellite communication this semester, and I got much clear idea of a couple of topics. I am so glad I watched this video, its inspirational. Your efforts and patience are greatly appreciated. Please make more of such stuff. Thank you.
+Supriya Gopal Thanks!
Practical Engineering make a kickstarter of this
dude what did you major in to learn about sat communications...sounds v cool
@@nathan484848 for this,maybe not,anyway you have FPV antena trackers that you can reprogram to do that,but i cant hardly refuse to buy an earth globe with a tiny ISS model on an arm,just like when they simulate the moon rotation,but with an ISS,real time.will be georgeous the 3 items or better,with the Sun.
NORAD has multiple jobs but clearly their most important job is to track Santa Claus
IIRC it started as a joke.
mgs peace walker reference? xd
You never know if one off his *presents* is a thermonuclear bomb
@@techgamer6875 Santa Claus as a war criminal is a story I want to write
Always good to know what the Red guy is up to.
what if you add a laser to the arm and put it in a room with glow in the dark wall paper and trace out the orbit on the walls? or just do a timelaps of it.
I was thinking having a high power hand pointer laser added to it when it's outside so you get a beam pointing right at the ISS or whatever your tracking. Sometimes satellites are in shadow and aren't visible until they hit sunlight. Sometimes they are so bright they are hard to look directly at but this is very rare, so having something bright to point at it is pretty cool. Now, the guys in the ISS are probably not going to be bothered by the radian divergence of a hand held laser at that distance so it should be pretty safe optically for them. You might even send them a coded message in light pulses if added on.
If pointing a laser pointer at an airplane can be dangerous and get you arrested, I'd imagine pointing one at the ISS probably isn't a very good idea either.
Altitude... altitude...
JustOneAsbesto You clearly don't know how to read.
or put it outside and have it confuse the optical systems on the ISS
Now there's a kickstarter project I'd back.
laserfloyd I thought that was mangekyo sharingan
laserfl
I would buy one.
definitely do not have tech to build this without pulling my hair out, I would buy one that is adjustable to planetary bodies and other satellites!
Avian Flight maybe a mobile app that connects with Bluetooth. Just tap on an object and the device points at it.
I just love the level of detail you used to have in your old videos. I understand why your videos have become so much more polished and appeal to a wider audience, but I love your enthusiasm for the “boring stuff”.
More deep dives!
So awesome! You should do a Kickstarter! I'd back it!
"Now for the moment you probably skipped ahead for..."
Sweet ;)
Great idea and great execution! Extra points for the use of Kerbal ;-) Somehow i see a Laserpointer attatched to this, constantly annoying the crew...
+Felix Dietz I thought that was the Kerbal Space game. LOL it's so hilarious.
+Felix Dietz Exactly my first thought after watching this- a laser pointer would definitely make it easier to spot the station for everyone around. I would definitely like to see a video of it in action, with the pointer!
+Felix Dietz Laserpointers are devastating to pilots a few miles away, but when reaching the ISS most laser pointers will have already lost concentration siginifacantly, becoming nothing but a VERY dim light.
A big hih precision hightech laser would do - but that would be VERY dangerous
+Grady Hillhouse I'm in Austin and have a couple lasers you're welcome to try. One is a 1/2W green and the other a pretty blue-violet. The green can be seen for a couple miles. I'm outside looking up for the ISS almost every time it's visible and would love to see a video with a laser pointing it out.
Felix Dietz i
This will help me with my five daily prayers facing the ISS.
The people who write RUclips's algorithms to predict what the user wants to watch did a great job. Glad I found this channel.
I will add my two cents worth here after some nearly six years since this was posted on your website Grady. It was fascinating to say the least for an engineering /mechanical guy like me. Keep up the good work Sir.
That's such a cool project and to see it actually in motion is joyful. Great work. I really hope your skills and aptitude are being utilized and appreciated in your professional career. You deserve it. Take good care.
You blew my mind telling orbits aren't round. My schoolbook lied to me!
some are round.
"The world is full of inspiration... if you just know what direction to look." Imma need you to T-Shirt that please.
Seriously... that right there... was some seriously profound and inspiring words... put it on a t-shirt and I will buy that t-shirt. Sounds like a catch phrase for your channel even. ;-)
You're a soldering pro!
Perfect gift for flatearthers.
Try to find out why always when this points upwards in the evening and in the morning its accompanied by a shining dot in the sky!
Witchcraft, BURN IT! *cough cough* I mean Science, BURN IT!
Boiling water at room temperature? BURN IT!
“A little bit further from the specs of the Apollo guidance computer” it the best way to say “more powerful” I have ever encountered
You took the greatest technological advances of mankind to create a metal finger of direction giving.
He is very under rated
In this project, you used your own program to calculate the trajectory, but you can go the other way.
We made a similar satellite tracking device. There is an Orbitron program that allows you to obtain satellite trajectories using data from the NORAD tracking system. This is a fairly high-quality, complete software that is well suited to solve this problem. Its plus is that it allows you to track any satellites that NORAD sees knowing their number in the system, and that’s almost all that is now in orbit, down to small pieces of garbage. What's convenient, Orbitron allows you to provide coordinates in a convenient form to the driver of your device. It remains only to convert them into signals transmitted directly to the device.
Our version turned out to be a little less smooth, because we used servos to control both axes, so we had a little “twitch” when tracking.
Came here from Reddit. I gotta say, it's very very rare that I will watch a RUclips video all the way through - I found this video very interesting and also very well made. Thanks for sharing! I'll be sure to check out your channel.
Attatch a directional Yagi-Uda antenna to it and you'll be able to hear their communications on ham-radio field days :)
What I thought was cool was that when I was in the service I was a 13R Firefinder Radar Operator and your machine has a lot of mirrors in our radar set (AN-TPQ 53). One of our first steps (since it was a mobile radar set) was to drop it within 6 inches of a known point and point the radar true north. We even a similar setup in terms of having a slip ring, azimuth and elevation drives, except ours cost about $70,000 each and weighed about 70lbs.
+Michael Hartmann Very cool
Heck, even one of the most sophisticated position tracking systems we have today, the GPS, has to have the space vehicles constantly monitored for precise location because of all the orbital perturbations, and an almanac of all the precise positions periodically uploaded to them for dissemination through their broadcasts. I knew this was the case, but not why or what it was called, but now I do thanks to this video! Thanks.
The ISS does not currently have tourists, but had tourists, such as Mark Shuttleworth (the Canonical/Ubuntu guy) in 2002. It cost him about 20 million dollars and required him to train for about a year, so that's some of the reasons not a whole lot of people have done that.
This may be the coolest device i've seen in a while. Bravo
What a fantastic little project!!
I like to visit your shows. thank you. by the way, some of us visit low earth orbit every time we step outdoors, and explore this world you try to explain, one bit at a time. again, thank you.
I am now looking back several years for your work. what a great legacy sir.
This is awesome. Once a while, when I see a bright stop flying like a start, I use my mobile phone to verify, if its the ISS. This creation makes the ISS more lively.
Man Every time i see one of your video, i feel like "Thank god i subbed to your channel".
This is great! I often open an app on my phone or check the live video stream from the ISS just to see where it is over the Earth, but a gizmo like this would be much more tangible reminder that the ISS (and its occupants) are constantly free-falling around us.
I hope something like it can be available for purchase someday, as I lack the necessary skills to build one myself.
And we are constantly freefalling around the sun so how about a tangible reminder for that?
What a neat idea, just highlighting this amazing human accomplishment is all that is needed, anything else is just icing :)
Love this. Is there a follow-up video?
This project is great.
In the coming months I had planned on making an arduino based version of something similar to this.
I understand the alternate choice of microcontroller, but the vast support for the arduino will be a huge help for me. Likely an arduino mega will be used.
here are the ideas I hope to incorporate into a version of this concept
1. adding a very bright laser pointer to the arm and turning it on during visible transits
2. possible gps with magnetic compass to allow it to calibrate itself.
3. star wars bb8 inspired magnetic coupling to allow the addition of a spinning globe with the space station magnetically coupled, perhaps an LED shining on the inside of the globe to indicate the area where the transit is visible.
4. fixed position LEDs to indicate launch sites that change color as launch events approach.
5. small display - probably raspberry pi powered to provide info about the various space events that are occuring, hopefully pulled off an RSS feed.
6. LEDs inside the globe to indicate light and dark with a good representation of the terminus of the sun revolving around the earth.
its quite ambitious and it likely will take me a very long time to create it all, perhaps a kickstarter to make a simplified version, and a big version to donate to museums?
great work, I love it, and keep it up.
this channel has always been great. Thank you
I need one. Like now. Keep up the fantastic content, Grady! As I am soon to be attendi g college to become a mechanical engineer, I LOVE all the math and physics content you've been putting into your videos lately!
This could be an interesting product. You should try to make it sleaker and kockstart it.
I'd buy one
+massimo giliberti me too. It doesn't have to be sleek though. The design looks nice either way.
I want one that can aim a telescope using a standard tripod boot. Oh man
Peeping Tom on the ISS astronauts, sounds like a good project :)
Uncle has an 11 inch scope and using the ISS tracker app we were able to look at the ISS through his telescope for a couple seconds when it was in transit overhead.
DAM your the man, im gonna have to put this on my things to do one day! this video reminded me of Smarter Everyday videos but the MCU version of it, thanks for all the work and research and provided links!
gotta say im a Arduino guy all the way and thats after giving up on Parallax MCU but dam it would have been nice to post the link of that mcu you used i was sorta impress by the specs
You said let me know what you are thinking? Here is what I am thinking: I fucking loved it
At 5:59 what's the aluminum kit called? I've re-listened over and over and just can't make out the name
Actobotics
Practical Engineering if we move this gizmo in 45° 35' N 31°E will update to its current location, or will stay on its original?
Brilliant! Fun and interesting. Now I want one!
That is awesome!! how have I not seen this before...
Very cool Grady. I am a ham radio operator and I have several software programs that track amateur radio satellites. I have made many contacts via these satellites, using my VHF/UHF handheld radio at about 5 watts of power, and a homebuilt, handheld antenna to point at the satellite during its pass. This is great fun and always amazes me. Back when the Soviet MIR space station was in orbit, I actually made a contact with it, and that remains the highlight of my ham radio satellite operating. I suspect your apparatus in this video could be fairly easily be adapted to control the azimuth and elevation of my handheld satellite antenna, given a suitable mounting system. That would be an interesting project.
Outstanding! It inspired me to take on a similar build. A quick visit to a favorite website and now my pocketbook is lighter, but the mailbox will soon be full. Hopefully I'll have something to show for it before too long. Thanks for documenting and sharing your project.
wow great job!! This could be really helpful for ham radio operators to point their antennas to any satellite during a pass!
The first idea that came to my head for practical uses of this is you could mount a camera on a system built to handle the weight, have it zoomed in and always pointing at the ISS so it’ll take long-exposure time lapses while keeping the ISS centered in the frame!
I know this was made in 2015, but now you can get a pretty convincing tour in vr! Its pretty fun to be weightless in vr, even if you don't feel like it in real life
Beautiful piece of electronics! You should put a starpointer (laser to point at the stars at night - sorta given by the name - but you never know) on the tip, only turning on, while the ISS is near. Would look AWESOME!
Yeah - and maybe tracking other celestial objects as well. Can see from the other comments, that I´m simply not that original. :-D Thanks for great videos. Also enjoyed your gardening video, and many more.
Very enlightening! Nice explanation and nice results! Thanks for sharing!
Quick tip stick a red or green laser pointer on it , we went to a planatarium recently and that is what the presenter used to show it to us after the show (:
Absolutely wonderful.
Incredible! Added this to favourites in the hopes of being able to build it one day :D
It'd make a really interesting kinetic sculpture to just have in the lounge as a centerpiece. You could even have a figurine with one outstretched arm, forever pointing at the ISS.
13 'flat earthers' disliked this.
22 now..
So "never" I guess
Katone Vi shhh,you’re wrong,the earth is a geosphere(in other words,a not so perfect sphere). Second of all if the earth is flat,then what is stopping people from digging straight through the earth?
Katone Vi Are you serious? All you need to do is go to the southern hemisphere and you see that the stars rotate around the south celestial pole, which proves we are on a rotating sphere with two celestial poles. Not to mention that geostationary satellites orbit above the equator for things like satellite TV.
Katone Vi researched it, found flat earth to be fake
the field of math that deals with distances on smooth curved objects is called differential geometry. it's the most beautiful math that there is.
That is really something. I am an amateur radio operator and the ISS now has a FM repeater on board. Well they have for a while but I just became aware of this. Anyways great job and you may have inspired me to try to make one of these on a slightly larger scale that you can attach a yagi onto that would track and point at the ISS for use on the repeater. Now I just need to get smarter...more smarter??? See what I mean. Again great job.
I just made a solar tracker using an arduino, two servos, gps module and a 16x2 display - the gps module solves having to enter the time and location details in the code, and it'll allow the unit to work anywhere in the world on power up and acquisition.
My azimuth servo struggled with the mass of a 20W solar panel, so am going to use stepper motors and 3D printed worm drives which can hold position without power until updated - these should be able to handle the mass of a few hundred watts of panels or more depending on worm drive construction and stepper motor power.
Would be nice to modify to add an antenna/telescope/camera to track satellites, planets etc to have a second life at night!
i'm so proud of him; just a funky little dude tracking ISS.
Very well done. Great idea.
This was super cool! Great project and nicely done. Must have been quite exciting to see it track the ISS as it passed above. It even got me stoked sitting here at my laptop.
Who thumbs down a video that's just compressing information for you.
dus toin People who know the earth is flat and still with a dome.
I don't know if you have already, but you should really send the specs for this to NASA so they could build a bunch, imagine being the family member an astronaut currently on the ISS and then someone walking up to you and giving you one of these and saying here, now you can see wherever your bro/sis/dad/mom/son/daughter etc is, i think that'd be such an awesome gift for someone in that situation.
Plan or a kit would be awesome as a hobby project AND as a teaching tool!
Thanksgiving last year, when my family was all gathered together, my brother was using a 2m amateur radio handheld with a cheap yagi antenna he built out of hardware supplies to listen to signals bouncing off one of the hamsats. He used an app on his phone, which he could use to aim it. I bet he could use something like this for the same purpose. He has talked about actually trying to ping it, but said he either needed more power than a handheld provides, or better aim then manually pointing can provide. This would certainly provide the better aim.
love it. watching the ISS pass over is as cool as this project
That would be awesome to mount a 2m antenna with a Baofeng inexpensive radio to listen or even communicate with the ISS. Beautiful project!
I was looking into ways to point an antenna at the ISS for amateur radio - scaling this up should work pretty well, thanks!
This would be highly useful in HAM / Amateur radio. Being able to track the ISS with an antenna would almost guarantee a contact.
if you strapped one of those powerful green laser pointers (the ones that create a continuous beam) to the pointer arm, that would take this awesome project to the next level.
So glad I found your channel. Cheers from SW Houston!!
I’d love one of these such a cool thing to build. Well done.
Amazing. Thank you. This video deserves many more views.
the Nucleo has made a name for its self
Nice and clear. Bravo!!!
Very cool project. Also, hooray KSP!
Awesome work dude!! 🙌
This is insaneeeeely cool!
Nice ! Tracker for a Dob telescope would be nice too :)
Shoutout to anyone who has dragged Jeb out to Eeloo, or on a Jool-5.
I want to make one but put it inside a semi-translucent globe with a laser pointer that shines through to show the current location of the ISS. Thanks for the inspiration!
I so need this in my turret design!!
place the whole contraption inside a plastic ball with a magnet on the pointer and have small metal space station you put on the outside. so it would not only show actual location but show its position on the globe. this could be a real neat kickstarter project. if it got enuf support maybe even put a wifi chip in there so it can up date its calculations.
This would be awesome for working amateur satellites!
This is sick man its so cool i can't believe it
Grady, would it be possible to post more of a step by step? I'd really like to build one of these, but I don't have much experience doing so.
Great stuff. Very clean! I guess I have yet ANOTHER project to put on my to do list. My suggestion. ..add a "next visible pass in xx:xx:xx" clock and you've got yourself a marketable product.
Woah that's cool. Should make a bigger version that can mount a DSLR with a telephoto (or even hooked up to a telescope) lens, could maybe try to get a pic of the ISS, or any other satellite.
Love it, and the design is so cute!!
How is this not a thing😍
Seemed to me that this video was less about tracking the ISS, and more about you proving that you know big words for everything.
Lol
@@PracticalEngineeringChannel 'Ha'
If you want to have a machine shop, you can buy one. There are used equipment sites and craigslist, where you can often get a lathe or mill for $1000 or less. You can buy used HSS tooling and other stuff on the bay, and you have your own machine shop for
I can see space being a problem. space is always a problem when buying something big.
This is a great idea... I see this on the inside of a globe...a light at the end... the globe semi-transparent... so the globe spins on its axis... and the light probe aligns with the globe so show where it is over earth :D
Man this video made me feel so inspired
Great video.
I built a prototype solar tracker using the arduino platform 6 months ago ,
so this brings back memories.
I'll probably try using the nucleo platform and actobotics next time around.
Thanks.
Dude! That is awesome! I wish I had the time to make one for myself. What a great desk toy. Many Thanks.
That is AWESOME. Well done to you!
Thank you for making this video
Definitely putting this on my list of projects to make!
It would look cool inside a seethrough globe to see exactly where on earth it is good vids
I would definitely buy one! It would be even cooler if you could make it track any satellite.