A couple months ago, I worked on putting a satellite tracking application on a Raspberry Pi. This worked okay but I have to use a keyboard to select the satellite I want to track before going outside to find it. I also have to lug around an external battery outside which isn’t fun. I could really use something more compact.
Hard Requirements
- Screen + Buttons
- Tracking multiple satellites (not hundreds, just a few)
- Display Azimuth
- Display Elevation
- Display transponder frequency with Doppler shift
- Polar plot (sky plot)
- Button to switch between satellites
- Ability to set the time and timezone on device (RTC required)
Soft Requirements
- Button to toggle between screens for a single satellite (if Polar plot and transponder data cannot fit in same screen)
- Ability to update TLE’s when plugging into computer
I have one of these pockeTETRIS things and love the little OLED screen. I will probably end up using the same screen. I’d like to just re-purpose my already built pockeTETRIS, but, I still need the RTC and definitely a microcontroller with more program space for largest library I will need, libpredict, which comes out to around 40k when I drop features I don’t need. The ATtiny85 in pocketTETRIS only has 8K. Pretty sure I am going with ATmega1284 a whopping 128k; plenty of room for libpredict, RTC library, OLED library, and my own code.