As you know, everyone who wasn’t on a boat in the Indian Ocean south of the Maldives narrowly escaped being crushed by the debris from a rocked that crashed to Earth. It would be totally reasonable if you are now wondering just where all the things in orbit are right now, just in case they crash down on your neighborhood. Here’s a prokect that uses an e-ink screen, a Raspberry Pi Zero, and Python, to make a DIY tracker for the International Space Station. Here’s more from Raspberry Pi Pod:

The display I have used is the Seeed Studio 2.13 inch Triple colour e-ink display. My guide to the screen and how to program it is here.

Information about the ISS’s current location is available via a api from NASA. So you can get the Longitude and Latitude right now. Then using a list of the Longitude and Latitude locations of 1000’s of Towns and Cities around the world supplied in a text file. A python program can find out what is the closest location on earth and the display it on the e-ink display.

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