orbit ability

[milliyin]

What does this Ability do?

Real-time voice tracking of the International Space Station. Ask where the ISS is right now, who is on board, when it will pass over your city, how fast it goes, what the crew is eating, or anything about life in space. Live data from space, spoken back to you.

Suggested Trigger Words

• orbit
• space station
• ISS
• where is the space station
• who is in space
• astronauts
• when will I see the ISS
• space station pass
• ISS location
• who is on the ISS

Type

• New community Ability
• Improvement to existing Ability
• Bug fix
• Documentation update

External APIs

• No external APIs
• Uses external API(s):
  • N2YO — Real-time satellite tracking (position, velocity, altitude, eclipse status). Free API key required.
  • SpaceDevs — Current astronauts in space. No key required.
  • OpenStreetMap (Nominatim) — City geocoding for pass predictions. No key required.
  • Open Notify — ISS pass times (deprecated, synthetic fallback active). No key required.

Testing

• Tested in OpenHome Live Editor
• All exit paths tested (said "stop", "exit", etc.)
• Error scenarios tested (API down, bad input, etc.)

Checklist

• Files are in community/orbit/
• main.py follows SDK pattern (extends MatchingCapability, has register_capability + call)
• README.md included with description, suggested triggers, and setup
• resume_normal_flow() called on every exit path
• No print() — using editor_logging_handler
• No hardcoded API keys — using placeholders with fallback
• No blocked imports (redis, user_config)
• No asyncio.sleep() or asyncio.create_task() — using session_tasks
• Error handling on all external calls
• Tested in OpenHome Live Editor

Anything else?

Demo conversation flow:

User: "orbit"
Orbit: "Orbit here. Ask me where the space station is, who is on board, when you can see it, or anything about the ISS."

User: "Where is the space station?"
Orbit: "The space station is over the Pacific Ocean. It is moving at 17,134 miles per hour, 266 miles above Earth."

User: "Who is up there?"
Orbit: "There are 10 people in space right now. On the ISS: Jessica Meir, Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, Anna Kikina, and 7 others."

User: "When will I see it from New York?"
Orbit: "The ISS will pass over New York on July 19 at 08:15 PM. Visible for 4 minutes. Look west, about 20 degrees above the horizon."

User: "Done"
Orbit: "Orbit out."

[github-actions]

✅ Community PR Path Check — Passed

All changed files are inside the community/ folder. Looks good!

[github-actions]

🔀 Branch Merge Check

PR direction: orbit → dev

✅ Passed — orbit → dev is a valid merge direction

[github-actions]

✅ Ability Validation Passed

📋 Validating: community/orbit
  ✅ All checks passed!

[github-actions]

🔍 Lint Results

✅ __init__.py — Empty as expected

Files linted: community/orbit/main.py

✅ Flake8 — Passed

✅ All checks passed!

[uzair401]

🎉 Approved! Thank you for this submission to our in-house hackathon, @milliyin . The Orbit is a creative and genuinely useful ability and astrophiles would love it, and it's really nicely put together. Great work — thanks for contributing! 🚀