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.
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.
I guess I'm just too far down the motion-capture rabbit hole, but I first interpreted this phrase as "tracking hands by satellite" rather than "tracking satellites by hand". I think purely linguistically (without any context that it's going to be easier for a hand to track a satellite than a satellite to track a hand) it's likely to be interpreted that way, also.
Aren't you the author? What are you showing HN here? There are special rules for Show HN.
> Please make it easy for users to try your thing out, ideally without barriers such as signups or emails. You'll get more feedback that way.
> If your work isn't ready for users to try out, please don't do a Show HN. Once it's ready, come back and do it then. Don't post landing pages or fundraisers.
While I'm not sure it runs afoul of the Show HN rules linked, it may given the referenced repository[1] isn't public. The linked repository from this post[2] and the YouTube video[3] might be sufficient.
But I agree it's a little disappointing to not see the code behind the demo.
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.