[HN Gopher] Show HN: EZ-TRAK Satellite Hand Tracking Suite
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Show HN: EZ-TRAK Satellite Hand Tracking Suite
EZ-TRAK is a comprehensive satellite tracking suite designed for
amateur radio operators, weather satellite enthusiasts, and
educational purposes. The software interfaces with an EZ-TRAK BLE
device which is mounted to a lightweight foldable portable
satellite dish antenna to hand track satellites in real-time,
providing azimuth and elevation data for optimal antenna
positioning.
Author : benbojangles
Score : 35 points
Date : 2025-05-04 16:10 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| ooterness wrote:
| When you say "hand track", you're not kidding.
|
| I was expecting something with motors controlled by a person, but
| this is literally picking up the dish and pointing it by muscle
| power.
|
| Back of envelope, a 1 meter parabolic antenna at 1.7 GHz gives
| about 12 degree beam width (FWHM), which is what makes this
| practical. Very clever.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Really cool project! What kind of foldable dish do you use?
| benbojangles wrote:
| it's called a farabrella kinda a diy thing made from faraday
| fabric weighs about 350gr for a 1m diameter dish. They are
| available on ebay.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Thanks I'll check it out!
| Liftyee wrote:
| Neat project! I've always wanted to try downlinking data from
| satellites because it just seems like magic. I wonder what sort
| of reactions you'd get from setting this up in a
| backpack/cyberdeck and walking around pointing a satellite dish
| at the sky.
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(page generated 2025-05-04 23:00 UTC)