A while ago I helped make a light that lit up when a near Earth asteroid went past our planet. Because I built it at a 24 hour hack day, I only had a little bit of time and there was a lot of ‘crafting’ involved (read: hot glue and plastic cups). Unfortunately I never really worked it into a finished product. This was partly because I noticed how rarely an asteroid actually buzzes the Earth close enough to be interesting. It got me thinking though, what else might I want to know about, and that happens often enough to be interesting?
The Space Station
The Space Station and Space Shuttle Endeavor in May 2011. Credit: NASA
The International Space Station (ISS) is a marvel of current technology and humanity. It's a continuously inhabited orbital outpost, floating in space just over our heads. But often we forget it's there. I realized that the light I made for asteroids would work better for the space station.
This time I would make it a more polished project.
ISS Lamp from Nathan Bergey on Vimeo.
Building
I already had the electronics from the old light, all I had to do was put it in a reasonable container. I decided to use a nice black cardboard box I had lying around. Then to have something to light up I went to the fantastic Scrap! in Portland to look for old bits of plexiglass. Armed with a nice piece of frosted plexiglass (a grand total of 10¢) and a box I got to work.
I took apart the old lamp and instead of having a ring of LEDs on a drinking cup, I glued them to the bottom edge of the plexiglass.
In the process of soldering LEDs that have been glued to the edge of a piece of plexiglass
Then I soldered them together in parallel. The microcontroller stayed the same as last time, a Teensy 2.0. I already had a breakout board built with headers for the teensy and with transistors to act as switches. So all I had to do was wire it up and put the box together.
Boxing the finished project up
Python
The hard part was figuring out when the Space station was going to be overhead. No matter what I would need the internet because the orbit of the station changes unpredictably from time to time. Luckily, rather than having to do orbital calculations myself, there is a great website out there called heavens above that has all the predictions of satellite passes already worked out. There was one problem: they don't have an API! That means a human could go read the website, but a computer doesn't really know what to make of it — it's not what we can ‘machine readable’. I wanted this to run automatically so I found some examples on the web that showed how easy it is to scrape data from the heavens above webpage. With that coded I had a python scrip that would grab the next ISS pass for Portland.
But again, wanting this to be automatic I needed something better than a script I would have to run every so often. I settled on a gnome applet that can run in the background on my panel on my desktop. For those of you who don't run linux, this is like the dock in OSX or the application bar in windows. I found plenty of examples online on how to write an app for the gnome panel, and thankfully it was pretty easy! After a couple of days of working out the details I had an app that sat on my computer and could let me know when the space station was overhead!
The applet running on my computer showing the next pass information
Open Source
There is only one of me, so the usefulness of this lamp as an outreach tool for everyone is limited. So I posted all the code and hardware descriptions you should need to make one yourself! Follow along on github:
http://github.com/natronics/ISS-Notify
I have a circuit diagram, arduino firmware, the python applet and an install script in the repository. Plus, if your running linux and use gnome, you can use the applet even without the lamp! The icon will turn red when the ISS is overhead. Look at the readme and update the code to make it work with your location and your hardware.
And don't forget the space station isn't just for fun but is a working laboratory and scientific outpost that streams down terabytes of data about the world we live in, making it a better place for all of us.
34 Comments
Wow, great project! I'm in an upcoming exhibition and will def. incorporate the ISS data into my light display, awesome to learn about the Heavens Above site.
Thanks! Glad I could be helpful. Let me know how your project turns out!
Can't wait to have one on my bedside table. Maybe a future iteration plays the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey when the ISS is overhead!
I think there could be a real market for something like this. Maybe if you can find a way to produce them you can throw it up on kick starter or something.
Nicely done, regardless.
Wow, excellent! Does it only light up for visible passes, or all?
It lights up for all passes. My idea was to help show what was previously invisible. On any given day (below about 55 deg latitude) the station probably goes overhead at least once! But without an indicator of some kind you may never know!
I love this idea! I would buy one if it were available commercially, Don't have the time or knowledge to do this myself. I see a market for this.
Just installed it on Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx and it runs great. Thanks building it!
Wow...That is genius. First, I felt my my own IQ rising just reading about your project. Sadly , the further I read, the dumber I felt. Wow..I should take some new courses and brush up! Keep up the great work and kudos on the imagination and originality.
Cool project. I have a friend who would love to emulate that project.
There might be a market for USB powered (or even wireless) devices that activate on events like this.
Humble (though maybe unreasonable) upgrade suggestion: Add other orbiting objects to the applet--satellites, say--and a way to select the ones you want to track. Then add a text display to the light that shows what is passing over.
take it! TAKE IT!!
Wow... really cool project. I'm especially interested in the programming part of it. Can you direct me to those examples on how to get data from the Heavens Above website? I tried googling for them, but I can't find anything (I don't know the right keywords). Your code is understandable (even to someone who doesn't know Python--like me), but it would be great if I can get something with a more detailed explanation.
@John
That's a fine idea! Hopefully in the future I can work that functionality in.
@pam
I did the same thing and never found any good explanations. I just ended up figuring it out. I'll more comments in the code the explain how it works. Check back in a few days for updates!
Don't have the time or patience to mock one up, but would totally buy one! You put in a lot of effort- kudos! Great idea!
Very cool, thanks Nathan. Got the Gnome applet running on Fedora... FWIW, the required package names differ slightly; it's pyserial instead of python-serial; gnome-python2-applet instead of python-gnomeapplet; and I'm not sure what you're using the Ubuntu "install" package for, since you don't appear to be using /usr/bin/install in your install.sh, but if that's what you need, on Fedora this is in the coreutils package.
One question: in the localization changes in ISS-notify-applet.py, is the timezone field DST-aware or no? Just wondering whether I should simply set "EST" and leave it at that, or whether I'd need to change it to "EDT" when DST is in effect to get accurate timestamps?
@paulds Thanks for the advice! I'm glad you could make it work. A general comment on code: I don't know what I'm doing
This was *supposed* to be a quick hack. I'm trying to clean it up since lots of people seem to want to duplicate it but I've never really prepared something for release before. I'm taking a crash course in making things distributable. Check back from time to time on github for updates. Also "install" is the parameter to apt-get, not a package 
To answer your question about localization: I don't know. I think that heavens above will do the right thing in daylight savings time (ie, _ST will actually work year round) but I don't know. They don't have an option for UTC!!!!!! I'm looking for a better solution.
This is fantastic! I'm going to make this for my dad, and add a few other satellites I think. He's an amateur ham radio guy and will surely get a kick out of this for fathers day!
Saw this on Gizmodo. As an avid space-lover, I totally like your work!! Could you or anyone else please port that Next Pass applet that notifies you when the ISS is above you to Windows or OS X? That'd be super awesome! (Unless one already exists?)
It's great !!!!
Great, great job! well done! Just this evening I was marvelling at the ISS and I was thinking how to create a notifier to tell me when I'm going to see it next time. A couple of hours later I found your project while browsing the web. Amazing...
I'll built the arduino too at some point. thanks m8
Nathan,
next step, build this:
http://www.sparkfun.com/tutorials/47
to start counting down automatically when the ISS is near
What a great tool! A suggestion to make it even better: could the light blink for a few minutes before the ISS becomes visible so that there is some reasonable amount of warning that one should go outside to try to see the pass?
You lost me after the information left the lamp making phase and went light speed. I am a wizard electrician, but alas, computer cro-magnon. How can I help?
A very cool idea. How about using a small globe and where you are located on the planet there could be a fixed mini space station in geosynchronous orbit. Have it light up over your virtual home. I like the idea of the asteroids also and why not have them light up as rare events.
@Rawnnie: I'm still working on the software! Bear with me. If you want to help, you can donate to the kickstater project (at the top of the page)
@Dimitris: Thanks! I would love to have a giant countdown clock. Maybe after I get this going.
@Ed Tomme: I'm working on making that a feature. Stay tuned.
@Roger: Great ideas. I want to expand what it can do with things like asteroids.
loved it
Hey, what about some additional LEDs that indicate what kind of object it s that passes? These LEDs could be reprogrammable. One could indicate satellites, anothee could indicate meteorites, some could indicate an individual object (like ISS). That would give you a better chance of knowing what cool things to look for.
Wow, Nathan, this is brilliant. After straining my neck staring at the sky a couple of days ago, this project is not only an awesome space project, but good for chiropractic health, too. I'm an associate editor at Instructables.com, and we'd love for you to share your project with our huge community. Perhaps a few will even contribute to your Kickstarter page?
If you'd like to get yourself a hot slice of 10 million views/month, please set up a free instructables account and post what you've got here. We're currently running a Space contest with some pretty slick prizes, and this project would definitely be a contender for the grand prize. It shouldn't be too onerous to copy-paste the text and use the existing pictures, so adding it wouldn't take you long. Let me know if you're interested or need any help.
Great work! And thanks for sharing it with everyone.
Very cool! I want to set up a 2''x3' (or larger) version in the lobby at NASA-JSC. Give me a call.
Hi,
why don't u use an ENC28J60 for ethernet connection?
If u do so, u can parse the http resonse from the heavens-above page (there's no api needed), so u don't need a pc anymore.
greets
haro
Wow dude. NASA found your project and liked it. You are on the way to success man, haha.
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30 Trackbacks
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