Saturday, May 28, 2016

Satellite Tracking (Update)

In a previous post I discussed the possibility of tracking satellites through the use of 9 degrees of freedom (9DOF) sensors to indicate the position of an otherwise arbitrarily positioned antenna.

Interestingly enough a kind reader pointed out to me a recent publication of a nearly identical solution to what I had envisioned.  Not wanting to necessarily duplicate the work of someone else, I faced the dilemma of continuing my efforts without reference to this other body of work or not.  It would be nice if the other author had done a poor job and I could improve on his work by publishing an update with an improved implementation.  However, I would find it difficult to improve on the work that has already been published.

So, my solution is going to be to recommend that you go take a look at the fine work done by Elwood Downey over at http://www.clearskyinstitute.com/ham/AST/ and leverage the excellent write-up and complete code listings if you are interested in building such a device.

I will be taking my own advice and implementing Elwood's solution, no doubt customizing things along the way.  Once I have that functional, I will publish an article here on my implementation of his work.

Nice work Mr. Downey!

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