SatGazer

A web application for tracking amateur radio satellites.

Features

• Real-time satellite tracking on an interactive map
• Satellite visibility prediction
• Transmitter information for amateur radio satellites
• Home location setting with elevation data

Development

Setup

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Run the development server
npm run dev

Building for Production

# Build for production
npm run build

# Preview the production build
npm run preview

Transponder Data

The application uses transmitter data from the SatNOGS DB. To reduce API requests and improve performance, the build process includes a step to prefetch transmitter data for all satellites in the amateur.txt file.

How it works

1. The fetch-transponders script reads the amateur.txt file and extracts satellite catalog numbers
2. For each satellite, it fetches transmitter data from the SatNOGS API
3. The data is saved to JSON files in the public/transponders/ directory
4. During runtime, the application loads transmitter data from these local files
5. If a local file is not found, the application falls back to the SatNOGS API

Manual Transponder Data Update

To manually update the transponder data:

npm run fetch-transponders

This will fetch the latest transmitter data for all satellites in the amateur.txt file.

URL Parameters

The application supports URL parameters for sharing specific views and improving SEO:

Satellite Selection

• id: The NORAD catalog number of the satellite to track
  • Example: https://www.hamsats.com/?id=25544 (tracks the ISS)

These URL parameters make it easy to share specific satellite tracking configurations and improve SEO by creating unique URLs for each satellite.