challenjours

https://trackiss.com/

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1YoGmfgdiheFbqG8U-o1Os4AEHHELe5ej?usp=sharing

The purpose of the ISS Tracker is to track the ISS in 3D in easy mode.

Our project includes:

• sighting opportunity,
• displaying of the space debris in the orbital trajectory
• space alerts
• trace the ISS where it has been in the past, and future
• point of view of iSS (video stream or following in 3D)

We create our project with the intention of it being easy to comprehend, yet educative toward the general audience as well as providing the open-source code for web developer interested in tracking ISS in 3D with a GitHub Repository.

Our application has two sides a front-end(the app) and a back-end(the server).

Our front-end app uses Next.js; a JavaScript framework, it generates a polished static-site(for speed and efficiency and many advantages) from many libraries including react. We then serve it to users over a Cloud Delivery Network(CDN) for users to access the site from anywhere faster as this service will let us publish to servers closer to them.

Our back-end server uses GIN; a GO framework. it allows us to make very light-weight yet fast server and cheaper hosting,

this is also where we do all the calculations to reduce the burden on the end-user's device as the calculations will be done by out efficient servers then served to users. this results in a faster start-up and allows devices that are not as powerful the same access.

Future plans:

• to learn and understand how people from any age, and their first instincts on the website and improve upon it
• have better accessibility for users that are less-fortunate.
• optimizing app for more devices
• fixing bugs
• refactoring the code
• writing up a proper documentation
• understand sgp4 for better code implementation
• better user interface by having less clutter.
• implementing functionalities for better visualization/options
• understand what WorldWind can actually do.
• We want to make more pages that explain how everything was done, calculated and how it can be further improved.

The agency that attributed to our application were:

• WorldWind
• Spot the Station
• Go Satellite
• Gin Gonic
• Gin Gonic Contrib
• simplemaps

As a group, this was our first hackathon. There were a lot of mixed ideas and thoughts but this hackathon brought us together, as individuals as well as a team, this hackathon has opened our world about other programming languages, different ways to make the same products, and what is the most efficient way to make our product come true.

At first, we couldn't decide on what to focus on as we have different levels of understanding on different technologies. We ultimately decided on few technologies that we liked and integrated it with each others preferred way of coding. We as a team understands that having a lot of packages/libraries bundled with our code will cause a heavier website, but we deemed it a necessary evil as we only have very little time for this hackathon and want to be ready for submission.

Our first thought was to make it intuitive, simple and modern looking. However, we realized after we implemented those functions, that we wanted more. We then added ideas like timeline, information cards, ground stations and viewing stations to further improve understanding and comprehension. Piquing interests by providing just enough information for the visitors.

Research

• some of the troubles in this category included figuring out the libraries provided by NASA, some of them had very little documentation and we were forced do trial by error, or figuring out examples that were done. This part took a lot of our time and was difficult for us, as our interest as Computer Science students, this isin't exactly our strengths.
• Spacebirds had good examples that helped with our code but ultimately wasn't good enough as their tech choices were very different from ours.

Presentation

• We weren't ready enough for the local presentation wasn't very coordinated and we do regret on how it was done. However, we were not discouraged as we understood that our goal here was to learn and have fun.

Doubt at our structure/plans

• We had misunderstandings and disagreements along the way understandably. However, we know that we all have the same goal and we had proper and constructive arguments that helped with the final implementations and such.
• At some point we learned that react + worldwind is quite different. But we powered through the documentations and with many trials and errors later, we found a way to update the ISS
• Finding out that ISS trackers aren't exactly live tracking but instead calculations that allows for accurate data. We thought that this cant be real and tried looking for actual live data but was ultimately defeated by the submission time.

Conclusions.

We loved what we did and wish to continue perfecting this project. We collectively learned a lot more and loved the process of it. There was also definitely ways we could've further optimized our time, picking on what to focus on and such. We learned through each others experiences and we think we made an overall cool project but we aren't exactly satisfied with the final product.

What we did generally (not accurate, recovered from memory)

First day:

Morning:

We discussed our strategy, target audience, interests, and planned on the implementation.

Noon:

We set up our environments to produce the code we desired.

Evening:

Research + Coding.

Second Day

Morning:

Surprised at how unready we were for presenting our ideas for the local presentation

Noon:

Research + Coding.

Evening:

maybe panic a little ;-;

https://www.pexels.com/

https://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/5-8/features/nasa-knows/what-is-the-iss-58.html

https://react-spring.dev/components/parallax

React Lottie

React Spring Paralax

WorldWind

Spot the Station

Go Satellite

Gin Gonic

Gin Gonic Contrib

simplemaps

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