With the NES International Space Station Tracker, homebrew NES developer Vi Grey has done something that should be impossible: hacked the NES to track the ISS. How? Here’s more from Vi Grey:
If you are confused as to how the NES can connect to the internet to get ISS tracking data, don’t worry, it’s not exactly straight forward. At the moment, there are two different methods I’m taking to get this to work. One to make this work on emulators and one to make this work on actual hardware. This post will only describe how to get the ISS tracker to work on an NES emulator. I may do a post later discussing how to make the ISS tracker work on actual NES hardware.
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
