[amsat-bb] Re: Smartphone app antenna pointing???

[tosca005 at umn.edu]

I am not aware of such an app for the Android platform, at least not for 
artificial communications satellites.

Google Sky Map will do that for the Moon, but "Oscar Zero" moves through 
the sky much more slowly than the Ham sats (as you well know). And even 
though having the phone point you to a slow moving satellite like the Moon 
is much easier computationally yhan tracking a fast-moving LEO, I have been 
a little dissappointed with the pointing accuracy of Google Sky Map using 
my Samsung Galaxy S2. When the phone figures out which way it is being 
pointed, it gives a beautifully accurate map of celestial objects in its 
line of view, but sometimes it seems like the phone's internal compass 
function is out of calibration.

Bottom line -- it should be doable and has, in principle, been done with 
the Moon as the satellite of interest, but has not, AFIK, been done for Ham 
sats.

I agree it could be a handy Android app if it worked well.

73 de W0JT/5
John P. Toscano
EL09ro October-May
EN34js June-September

On Dec 28 2012, Doug Faunt N6TQS +1-510-717-1197 wrote:

>It seems to me that some smartphones have sensors for elevation and 
>azimuth, and the capacity to calculate those for satellite passes.
>Has anyone combined all that so that one could just attach the 'phone to 
>the antenna boom and have it indicate where to point it?
>
>This would be particularly useful for the analog sats, since very little 
>attention would need to be paid to antenna pointing.
>
>73, doug
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