Tracking the international space station with an Arduino

Last summer I received the very fun HackPack for my birthday. Every 2 months you get a box of parts and assemble a fun hardware project. The first item in the pack was the IR turret. You control the turret with an IR remote, and can shoot the little foam bullets at things. It was pretty cool, but I’m not a huge fan of shooting things. At around the same time I saw this XKCD: I am into going outside to watch fun stuff happen outside, especially if it is when the International Space Station (ISS) is passing overhead. I also thought the XKCD device was a pretty fun idea. After chatting with my friend Trevor at Plateau Astro, I figured I could hack the IR turret into something that points at the ISS at all times. He pointed me to this awesome project, where someone had done something similar. What is the ISS As a quick refresher, the International Space Station is a big habitable space craft that orbits the earth at an altitude of about 420km. It travels at a speed of ~28,000 km/h, a ... Read full article.