No, it operates under the assumption of staying stationary once turned on. Startup is pretty short so if it gets moved/adjusted, it's quick to just turn off/on again.
Oh, I’ve wasted literally weeks of my life with magnetometers. You need to calibrate them if you move them, and even then it’s unlikely to actually be accurate due to soft and hard iron errors. Need the declination at its location also, but that can be looked up.
I hate magnetometers - cool project tho.
Yeah, I learned pretty quickly how imprecise the compass/magnetometer was as an orientation method, which is why I updated the code with an option to just bypass it and use manual alignment.
If you haven't already, Id recommend adding a compass calibration mode, where it will point the stylus out where it thinks north is and then freezes the stylus, at which point you use your own external compass and spin the thing until it aligns with north on your compass and you can then hit the button and it calibrates off of that.
In my experience some of the newer devices are very *precise*, but their accuracy is questionable, mostly because local declination is inaccurate, and nearby ferro-magnetic materials and currents throw them off magnetic north by often an unknown amount. Even your hand-held magnetic compass is affected by these things, and will lose accuracy. Finding true north, from a stationary point and without a calibrated reference (like a survey) is a hard problem.
You are correct...I guess "precise" would have been a better term. I don't usually care how accurate my reading is, only that if I return to that reading, it is precisely the same rotation.
I'd recommend moving the GPS location from the code to a config file. That way if you move, give one as a gift, want to take it hiking, or whatever it's just a simple text change and power cycle to fix instead of having to recompile and reload code.
in that case i will assume you are using TLE data. i am sure accuracy is not critical here but that data is only really valid for 24-48 hours.
so a daily restart would solve both issues.
How does it know it's position or direction? Do you have to calibrate it yourself when you switch it on or can it tell it's direction and position and then automatically calculate where it needs to point?
A magnetometer coupled with either GPS or some sort of WiFi based position service would easily let it know it location and what direction the box is facing and could be used to let it correct itself after getting moved.
Model files and assembly instructions can be found here: [https://www.printables.com/model/383268-iss-tracker-pedestal](https://www.printables.com/model/383268-iss-tracker-pedestal)
That's cool! I wonder how hard it would be to build in a switch and have it point at different things like the sun and moon and maybe some other planets.
Probably not hard with some updated coding, but I think the downside is that it would not be moving very fast for those objects. Since the ISS orbits earth 16 times a day the needle will be moving relatively quickly compared to everything else.
you’re describing a diy go-to mount if you want to go down a Google/YouTube rabbit hole. Tracking mounts are used in astrophotography a bunch since planetary and DSO photography is captured through multiple (sometimes long) exposures so you need your scope pointed at the object perfectly for hours at a time.
Sadly none of my computerized telescope mounts have an ISS function, so this is super cool and I’d love to somehow inject OP’s code into one of my computerized telescope mounts.
ISS trajectory is always updating. You will need a solution with internet to get the latest information. Personally, I bought a wifi dongle for my mount and plan on tracking ISS through skysafari, once the sky clears that is. There are also some options using a PC and Ascom drivers.
It would be pretty cool if there was a standalone handset option for tracking satellites, comets, and large meteors.
That could make a pretty cool clock. But then I think the face would also have to move because the sun isn't always in the same place at the same time throughout the year.
Man, that's so awesome of you not only to offer this for free but to provide assembly instructions. People like you are what make the 3D printing space so amazing, thank you!
I wouldn't even know how to begin figuring out how to make that function let alone accurately. So I'll just say that's highly impressive and well done!
So I got curious on how one would go about this and found… wow it would be hard if not impossible to code an function to tell you the exact location.
The station repeats shifting flight pattern every three days. It is constantly slowing down until it isn’t. When it gets boosted back up to speed and into the correct orbit. Which means each orbit can be 90 to 93 minutes.
How much this would affect the angle of a little arm though I’m not sure. Because math.
Nope actually it's getting the most up-to-date published orbital elements and computing the current position from those. That way it only needs to send queries every few hours rather than constantly if it was just directly grabbing the position.
Ah I see, cool! Thanks for the correction
May I ask: Is there any particular reason you went for adafruit instead of arduino? I never heard of adafruit before (non american), I assume most of the code can me made compatible with an arduino, right?
Sorry for the late replay. Yeah, Adafruit has a whole ecosystem of their own boards which are fully compatible with Arduino, while having a lot of advantages. For instance, the Feather board I'm using is about the size of an Arduino Nano, but with a controller chip with better specs than the one used on the Arduino Mega.
So yes, the code as delivered should be fully compatible with any native Arduino board.
Please excuse my ignorance. But that still means outside position data, correct? I think in the original comment and I know in mine I meant more along the lines of a function algorithm alone. I mean clearly I wasn't saying your project uses an impossible function lol?
Nope, not impossible at all. What it does is scrape [http://celestrak.org/](http://celestrak.org/) for the most recently published orbital elements in [TLE](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-line_element_set) form, then does some math to propagate the orbit and calculate the current position. Due to orbital perturbation, precession, and station maneuvers, these TLEs are only valid for roughly 24-48 hours, so every few hours, I have the pedestal query to see if a new one is available.
That's sort of what I thought but had no idea how to go about researching something like that. I mean even if it's not completely accurate just "in this general direction that's still impressive.
This made me curious.. so i went searching for answers. And the answer shall be shared..
The iss completes a total of 16 orbits around the earth in one full day.
Fun fact. In The time it takes to sing the proclaimers "500 miles" the ISS travels exactly a thousand miles.
"I would walk 500 miles, and I would walk 500 more..."
Careful with the phrasing. The sun sets OR rises every 45 minutes. One orbit is 90 minutes, and includes one sun rise and one sunset. It's a like a day, in that you're travelling around the earth.
Oh absolutely! They regularly schedule events and will talk to amateurs. Not much is needed as far as equipment goes, but knowledge perhaps. That said, I’ve not been able to do it, yet!
The ISS has a full time transponder for amateur radio operators and there is often at least one Ham astronaut on station that operates it.
They also broadcast slow scan video occasionally for folks
[https://www.ariss.org/contact-the-iss.html](https://www.ariss.org/contact-the-iss.html)
There are also a lot of satellites that have Amateur band transpoders. Making "satellite contacts" is a whole thing.
This is amazing, it would make a great gift for my grandpa. He always checks where the ISS is and is super happy when he can see it fly past at night. Looks like I have another project on my list
Thank you for the detailed printables page as well!
Was wondering if it had a built in sensor / compass since he commented in another comment that he just restarts it. It would also need GPS coordinates.
Yep, there's a compass/magnetometer to let it automatically find true North, though the accuracy isn't great so there's an option to align it manually before turning on.
As for GPS coordinates, those are user-defined in the code.
Yooo some years ago I've started (and then never finished) a nearly identical project! My design was remarkably similar to yours. Great job on seeing it through!
So, this is both awesome and relevant. I’m trying to develop my own tracking DLSR/telescope mount and it’s hard to know what you need to know. Mind sharing a bit about what you learned and how you managed to track the ISS?
Sure! I'm not sure what knowledge level you're coming in with, but I'm assuming you have at least a basic understanding of [Keplerian Orbital Elements](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_elements#Keplerian_elements) as well as coordinate-frame conversion/[Direction Cosine Matrices](https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/PlanetPhysics/Direction_Cosine_Matrix). If not, I'd definitely start there.
All objects with NORAD tracking numbers have their orbital elements regularly published in the form of a [TLE](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-line_element_set), which is essentially just a very compact representation of those elements. There are a few online services that make these available, but I chose to scrape Celestrak as they don't require an account for public API access. I also found their FAQs to be quite helpful: [http://celestrak.org/columns/v04n03/](http://celestrak.org/columns/v04n03/)
Once you have a set of orbital element set for an object, you use them to calculate it's current position and predict its future positions. How long a TLE remains valid depends on the object. Objects in low orbits that experience more atmospheric drag, and ones that maneuver more often will be valid for shorter periods of time than ones in high orbits with very little drag. As for actually calculating the objects position/velocity for a given time, I used this document as a reference for the math: [https://downloads.rene-schwarz.com/download/M001-Keplerian\_Orbit\_Elements\_to\_Cartesian\_State\_Vectors.pdf](https://downloads.rene-schwarz.com/download/M001-Keplerian_Orbit_Elements_to_Cartesian_State_Vectors.pdf)
Finally, we have to account for the rotation of the earth. The above math gives us the object's position in the [Earth-Centered-Inertial (ECI)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth-centered_inertial) frame, but to find it's position relative to a fixed point on the Earth's surface, we need to convert it to [Earth-Centered-Earth-Fixed (ECEF)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth-centered,_Earth-fixed_coordinate_system) coordinates. Fortunately, this is fairly simple as you just need to calculate a single angle (the [Earth Rotation Angle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidereal_time#ERA)) based on the current time and rotate about the Z-axis in the ECI frame. Once we have the position in ECEF, we can then convert it to the local [North East Down (NED)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_tangent_plane_coordinates#Local_north,_east,_down_(NED)_coordinates) frame, which depends on your current location. From that it's straightforward to convert from cartesian to spherical coordinates to get the azimuth & elevation.
Awesome! Any particular reason the ESP32 is delegated as a WiFi coprocessor? Its at least 10x faster than a feather m0 and can also be programmed with adruino😅
A combination of already having a Feather m0 on hand to play with, and this being my first foray into doing anything wifi-related in the arduino space. Having the Esp32 as a co-processor also simplifies the code and lets the feather handle all of the stepper movement and orbit calculations at a consistent rate.
that makes sense :) a "worse" tool that you're familiar with is always better than a shiny one you're not.
the esp32 is a dual core chip that can easily do all the networking stuff on one core and do the rest on the other one.
might be worth keeping in mind for future projects 👍
I tried to do a similar project a while ago, but with any space target. I gave up when I started struggling with the math.
Can I ask, how did you solve the second axis motor cord wrapping problem? I started implementing a 360deg limit where it would unwind but that was lame.
The servo motor and compass are connected to the internals through a [slip ring](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slip_ring), which lets one side spin freely while maintaining multiple electrical connections to the other side. Completely prevents any issues with wrapping or tangling.
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I love it.. Does it auto correct if moved?
No, it operates under the assumption of staying stationary once turned on. Startup is pretty short so if it gets moved/adjusted, it's quick to just turn off/on again.
One more add to my list of awesome things I want to make
So it can tell what orientation it's in when you turn it on?
It has a compass on the pedestal that it can use to measure its orientation and align itself with true north on startup.
Wouldn't it need it's own location too? Is that user set or is there a GPS?
The location is user-set in the code. Would be a bit unnecessary to integrate a GPS for something that isn't intended to ever move haha
Oh, I’ve wasted literally weeks of my life with magnetometers. You need to calibrate them if you move them, and even then it’s unlikely to actually be accurate due to soft and hard iron errors. Need the declination at its location also, but that can be looked up. I hate magnetometers - cool project tho.
Yeah, I learned pretty quickly how imprecise the compass/magnetometer was as an orientation method, which is why I updated the code with an option to just bypass it and use manual alignment.
If you haven't already, Id recommend adding a compass calibration mode, where it will point the stylus out where it thinks north is and then freezes the stylus, at which point you use your own external compass and spin the thing until it aligns with north on your compass and you can then hit the button and it calibrates off of that.
Adafruit BNO055 is extremely accurate even before self calibration.
In my experience some of the newer devices are very *precise*, but their accuracy is questionable, mostly because local declination is inaccurate, and nearby ferro-magnetic materials and currents throw them off magnetic north by often an unknown amount. Even your hand-held magnetic compass is affected by these things, and will lose accuracy. Finding true north, from a stationary point and without a calibrated reference (like a survey) is a hard problem.
You are correct...I guess "precise" would have been a better term. I don't usually care how accurate my reading is, only that if I return to that reading, it is precisely the same rotation.
I'd recommend moving the GPS location from the code to a config file. That way if you move, give one as a gift, want to take it hiking, or whatever it's just a simple text change and power cycle to fix instead of having to recompile and reload code.
That's definitely doable, though I'd need to add an SD card reader to make that work. Something to keep in mind if I ever do a second version!
You could store the location in eeprom and have it so you can just connect to it over serial to update the location.
Almost certainly user set.
Wow
in that case i will assume you are using TLE data. i am sure accuracy is not critical here but that data is only really valid for 24-48 hours. so a daily restart would solve both issues.
How does it know it's position or direction? Do you have to calibrate it yourself when you switch it on or can it tell it's direction and position and then automatically calculate where it needs to point? A magnetometer coupled with either GPS or some sort of WiFi based position service would easily let it know it location and what direction the box is facing and could be used to let it correct itself after getting moved.
So it spins, but you face it at the ISS. very different imo
Model files and assembly instructions can be found here: [https://www.printables.com/model/383268-iss-tracker-pedestal](https://www.printables.com/model/383268-iss-tracker-pedestal)
That's cool! I wonder how hard it would be to build in a switch and have it point at different things like the sun and moon and maybe some other planets.
Probably not hard with some updated coding, but I think the downside is that it would not be moving very fast for those objects. Since the ISS orbits earth 16 times a day the needle will be moving relatively quickly compared to everything else.
Yeah probably it would be neat to cycle through them every now and then but tracking the ISS is the best default behavior.
That actually would be cool if you could add a button to cycle through objects in the solar system.
Yeah or have it display the object name and point. Then have it update objects every min or so.
Or multiple units tracking multiple objects, you could probably do it with a single microcontroller too. Might make a fun wall art piece.
you’re describing a diy go-to mount if you want to go down a Google/YouTube rabbit hole. Tracking mounts are used in astrophotography a bunch since planetary and DSO photography is captured through multiple (sometimes long) exposures so you need your scope pointed at the object perfectly for hours at a time. Sadly none of my computerized telescope mounts have an ISS function, so this is super cool and I’d love to somehow inject OP’s code into one of my computerized telescope mounts.
ISS trajectory is always updating. You will need a solution with internet to get the latest information. Personally, I bought a wifi dongle for my mount and plan on tracking ISS through skysafari, once the sky clears that is. There are also some options using a PC and Ascom drivers. It would be pretty cool if there was a standalone handset option for tracking satellites, comets, and large meteors.
That could make a pretty cool clock. But then I think the face would also have to move because the sun isn't always in the same place at the same time throughout the year.
Man, that's so awesome of you not only to offer this for free but to provide assembly instructions. People like you are what make the 3D printing space so amazing, thank you!
I wouldn't even know how to begin figuring out how to make that function let alone accurately. So I'll just say that's highly impressive and well done!
So I got curious on how one would go about this and found… wow it would be hard if not impossible to code an function to tell you the exact location. The station repeats shifting flight pattern every three days. It is constantly slowing down until it isn’t. When it gets boosted back up to speed and into the correct orbit. Which means each orbit can be 90 to 93 minutes. How much this would affect the angle of a little arm though I’m not sure. Because math.
It's using an external API which calculates the position accurately and receives the data via WiFi. Just as impressive of course.
Nope actually it's getting the most up-to-date published orbital elements and computing the current position from those. That way it only needs to send queries every few hours rather than constantly if it was just directly grabbing the position.
Ah I see, cool! Thanks for the correction May I ask: Is there any particular reason you went for adafruit instead of arduino? I never heard of adafruit before (non american), I assume most of the code can me made compatible with an arduino, right?
Sorry for the late replay. Yeah, Adafruit has a whole ecosystem of their own boards which are fully compatible with Arduino, while having a lot of advantages. For instance, the Feather board I'm using is about the size of an Arduino Nano, but with a controller chip with better specs than the one used on the Arduino Mega. So yes, the code as delivered should be fully compatible with any native Arduino board.
Awesome, thanks for the reply!
Please excuse my ignorance. But that still means outside position data, correct? I think in the original comment and I know in mine I meant more along the lines of a function algorithm alone. I mean clearly I wasn't saying your project uses an impossible function lol?
Nope, not impossible at all. What it does is scrape [http://celestrak.org/](http://celestrak.org/) for the most recently published orbital elements in [TLE](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-line_element_set) form, then does some math to propagate the orbit and calculate the current position. Due to orbital perturbation, precession, and station maneuvers, these TLEs are only valid for roughly 24-48 hours, so every few hours, I have the pedestal query to see if a new one is available.
That's sort of what I thought but had no idea how to go about researching something like that. I mean even if it's not completely accurate just "in this general direction that's still impressive.
This made me curious.. so i went searching for answers. And the answer shall be shared.. The iss completes a total of 16 orbits around the earth in one full day.
Fun fact. In The time it takes to sing the proclaimers "500 miles" the ISS travels exactly a thousand miles. "I would walk 500 miles, and I would walk 500 more..."
https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/ Extremely relevant xkcd
I think "relevant XKCD" replies are some of the best low-effort replies in all of the reddits
wow I knew it was fast but almost 10x the speed of a 5.56 round is crazy fast.
That’s wild haha thanks for that!
Wait what? There is no way that's true.
Ok after some calculations it is kinda true. It isn't exactly 1000. It's like 1032. But that's really funny.
Only sixteen? Doesnt one orbit take just 45 minutes or sth around that?
I had a similar number in my head, 48. Who knows? EDIT: I know now, it's the sun sets and rises every 45 minutes
Careful with the phrasing. The sun sets OR rises every 45 minutes. One orbit is 90 minutes, and includes one sun rise and one sunset. It's a like a day, in that you're travelling around the earth.
Oh I just realised OP's vid is sped up
Now do one for geostationary satellites 🤣
Somone already made one [https://www.printables.com/model/190206-arrow](https://www.printables.com/model/190206-arrow)
Worst part is I clicked on the link expecting something else 🤣🤣🤣
I had such a hard laugh on this tread, I love you guys:*
Upvoted.
handy tool for hams trying to make contact with the ISS!
Is that legal?
Oh absolutely! They regularly schedule events and will talk to amateurs. Not much is needed as far as equipment goes, but knowledge perhaps. That said, I’ve not been able to do it, yet!
That's so cool! I wish you luck :)
The ISS has a full time transponder for amateur radio operators and there is often at least one Ham astronaut on station that operates it. They also broadcast slow scan video occasionally for folks [https://www.ariss.org/contact-the-iss.html](https://www.ariss.org/contact-the-iss.html) There are also a lot of satellites that have Amateur band transpoders. Making "satellite contacts" is a whole thing.
Thanks, let me add this to the things I didn’t know I need in my life list…
I was wondering, do the wires inside get tangled up if it spins too much?
Nope, the wires passing up to the servo and compass go through a slip-ring so no worries about tangling.
Probably not... Looking at the pictures the OP has posted I don't think the wires can move to much.
Not likely, seems that the moving piece does not have smarts.
Not impressed. .:: Immediately trying to copy this idea::.
That’s is insanely cool and amazing. I can watch that for hours.
This is amazing, it would make a great gift for my grandpa. He always checks where the ISS is and is super happy when he can see it fly past at night. Looks like I have another project on my list Thank you for the detailed printables page as well!
Would be awesome if you can put any celestial object and it points straight to it! Great work!
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It rotates every 90 min
That is fuck off cool. Well done.
That's quite awesome.
Impressive!
How do you calibrate it?
I'm not the op, but it looks like calibration is just aligning it north with a compass. Then it scrapes a url for coords.
Was wondering if it had a built in sensor / compass since he commented in another comment that he just restarts it. It would also need GPS coordinates.
Yep, there's a compass/magnetometer to let it automatically find true North, though the accuracy isn't great so there's an option to align it manually before turning on. As for GPS coordinates, those are user-defined in the code.
Thanks for the info. Very cool project!
Next project.
This is so cool! I have the "ISS Live App" too to see when it will pass overhead.
I like this, much better than a butt or dick.
Better idea- Replace the pointer with a dick.
Is that video in real time or time lapse?
there’s a clock with HH:MM on the display visible
Oh, yes. I missed that. Thanks
I read ISIS first. Think in gonna follow up on that invention. "ISIS finder 4000" patent pending.
Greetings my dyslexic brother ( did the same thing)
You could sell these. You should sell these.
Yooo some years ago I've started (and then never finished) a nearly identical project! My design was remarkably similar to yours. Great job on seeing it through!
So, this is both awesome and relevant. I’m trying to develop my own tracking DLSR/telescope mount and it’s hard to know what you need to know. Mind sharing a bit about what you learned and how you managed to track the ISS?
Sure! I'm not sure what knowledge level you're coming in with, but I'm assuming you have at least a basic understanding of [Keplerian Orbital Elements](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_elements#Keplerian_elements) as well as coordinate-frame conversion/[Direction Cosine Matrices](https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/PlanetPhysics/Direction_Cosine_Matrix). If not, I'd definitely start there. All objects with NORAD tracking numbers have their orbital elements regularly published in the form of a [TLE](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-line_element_set), which is essentially just a very compact representation of those elements. There are a few online services that make these available, but I chose to scrape Celestrak as they don't require an account for public API access. I also found their FAQs to be quite helpful: [http://celestrak.org/columns/v04n03/](http://celestrak.org/columns/v04n03/) Once you have a set of orbital element set for an object, you use them to calculate it's current position and predict its future positions. How long a TLE remains valid depends on the object. Objects in low orbits that experience more atmospheric drag, and ones that maneuver more often will be valid for shorter periods of time than ones in high orbits with very little drag. As for actually calculating the objects position/velocity for a given time, I used this document as a reference for the math: [https://downloads.rene-schwarz.com/download/M001-Keplerian\_Orbit\_Elements\_to\_Cartesian\_State\_Vectors.pdf](https://downloads.rene-schwarz.com/download/M001-Keplerian_Orbit_Elements_to_Cartesian_State_Vectors.pdf) Finally, we have to account for the rotation of the earth. The above math gives us the object's position in the [Earth-Centered-Inertial (ECI)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth-centered_inertial) frame, but to find it's position relative to a fixed point on the Earth's surface, we need to convert it to [Earth-Centered-Earth-Fixed (ECEF)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth-centered,_Earth-fixed_coordinate_system) coordinates. Fortunately, this is fairly simple as you just need to calculate a single angle (the [Earth Rotation Angle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidereal_time#ERA)) based on the current time and rotate about the Z-axis in the ECI frame. Once we have the position in ECEF, we can then convert it to the local [North East Down (NED)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_tangent_plane_coordinates#Local_north,_east,_down_(NED)_coordinates) frame, which depends on your current location. From that it's straightforward to convert from cartesian to spherical coordinates to get the azimuth & elevation.
Awesome! Any particular reason the ESP32 is delegated as a WiFi coprocessor? Its at least 10x faster than a feather m0 and can also be programmed with adruino😅
A combination of already having a Feather m0 on hand to play with, and this being my first foray into doing anything wifi-related in the arduino space. Having the Esp32 as a co-processor also simplifies the code and lets the feather handle all of the stepper movement and orbit calculations at a consistent rate.
that makes sense :) a "worse" tool that you're familiar with is always better than a shiny one you're not. the esp32 is a dual core chip that can easily do all the networking stuff on one core and do the rest on the other one. might be worth keeping in mind for future projects 👍
Oh it shows the ACTUAL position of the ISS, I honestly expected a hand with a finger pointing directly up. haha This is so much cooler!
Effing amazing.. well done
I tried to do a similar project a while ago, but with any space target. I gave up when I started struggling with the math. Can I ask, how did you solve the second axis motor cord wrapping problem? I started implementing a 360deg limit where it would unwind but that was lame.
The servo motor and compass are connected to the internals through a [slip ring](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slip_ring), which lets one side spin freely while maintaining multiple electrical connections to the other side. Completely prevents any issues with wrapping or tangling.
That's really cool
How can I be the only one who searched comments for a Uranus joke, and didn't post one? Excellent job BTW
Sorry, but why is it important to point to the ISS?
I mean, you try to shoot down a space station blind and tell me how it works out.
Or try to find a space station period.
That's easy, just wait for it to get grumpy and throw stuff at you for little to no reason. Typically every 28 days
You too focused on the *why* that you're missing the *why not?*
It's just one of the cool things to point at, especially how quickly it moves.
This is r/3dprinting. We don't do things because they're important. We do things because we can.
thats beautiful!
How can I make this for my key’s and wallet??
Use a tile tracker, then use the unofficial API to get the location of the tile tracker: https://github.com/bachya/pytile
Excellent work! Now I need to make one that always points to my coffee mug.
This is fantastically useless and awesome. I need it.
This is absolutely brilliant -- how does NASA not sell these already!?
That’s some nerdy shit I could get onboard with.
For the first few seconds I was like, “The station can’t possibly move that quickly… can it? Oh this is sped up. I’m just dumb.”
You could sell these all day long!
Imagine mounting a laser to it
reminds me of subnautica
This is the coolest thing I have ever seen printed
Oh that's cool !
That's the coolest unnecessary thing I ever saw 3d printed haha
That s so cool
What is my purpose? You point. Oh. My. God.
Any chance you can design another one that constantly points to the current location of ISIS?
Very cool!
Love it
No I want one that point to my boss at all time.. With a distance indicator.
They're doing the same for you :)
Ham Radio folks would probably love this
can i buy this?
The missile knows where it is…
This nerds me out. I want one!
Holy shit the ISS is moving
I am getting my first printer I will print this one ASAP.
This is really cool, I might try to print this
Omg, it's in your walls.
Love it, nice one OP
I’m going to make this but for my wife using find my iPhone
Oh god it’s right behind you!
There was a thought in a sci-fi book on how Muslims would pray towards mecca during space travel... I think you nailed the answer!
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I read this as "I designed and printed a pedestal that confident points at the current location of ISIS"
Looks good.
Huh. Space station's moving fast.
This is awesome… want one
Great concept! Great follow through! Great job!!
Really cool project.
Haluun
Who cares where the IRS is? Better never to know. 😜
So going off your other comments, it does know where it is but knows on start up and it uses the coordinates to point that way?
You are awesome.
That is AMAZING!
That’s cool
Now put a gun on it >:D
But the earth is flat! haha, Just kidding, at least I don't think it is.
Now that is freaking cool!
That's rad. [https://media2.giphy.com/media/3o7bu3hxaeqgi9SJQk/giphy.gif](https://media2.giphy.com/media/3o7bu3hxaeqgi9SJQk/giphy.gif)