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A crash course on hacking satellites

420 points| PatrolX | 5 years ago |nyan-sat.com | reply

62 comments

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[+] elwell|5 years ago|reply
I didn't know you could embed CSS animations in an SVG file.

It's a thing of beauty: https://nyan-sat.com/assets/licensed/orbital_comparison.svg

Be sure to view page source.

[+] Brajeshwar|5 years ago|reply
There was a recent story about free Vector Illustrations[1]. If I'm guessing it right, most of these SVGs are CSS animated, if not, it should be.

So, my business-partner, friend, and co-founder is like 10x better than me in design and front-end. Around 2012-13, he showed me how to animate some diagrammatic illustration with SVG and CSS. That was when I realized how brilliant it is to code animations and was thus highly scalable and responsive.

1. https://www.pixeltrue.com/free-illustrations

[+] joeraut|5 years ago|reply
Cool CSS animations aside, that diagram is fantastic!

Edit: It also handles i18n for EN, FR and ES by displaying different titles and hyperlinks for different system languages. Jaw dropped.

[+] saagarjha|5 years ago|reply
SVG is great, it's sort of a simplified iframe in an img element. It's great for implementing crispy animations that you don't want to have to fiddle with the DOM for.
[+] sillysaurusx|5 years ago|reply
This seems noticeably snappier than canvas, too.
[+] sci_prog|5 years ago|reply
Wow! Thanks for noticing this. It is brilliant! Now just gotta think of a project where I could use this ha!
[+] joncrane|5 years ago|reply
I just want to take a moment to acknowledge the hilarity of the domain name. For those who don't get it: it's a play on the name of the nyan-cat meme: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyan_Cat
[+] Lammy|5 years ago|reply
I'm enjoying the section titles too:

> Satellites? Orbiting MY planet?

It's more likely than you think.

[+] _underfl0w_|5 years ago|reply
I remember hearing that Sum 41 (they're actually still around!) got sued for using Nyan Cat in a music video or something. Let's hope the author doesn't find this site haha
[+] system2|5 years ago|reply
I never understood why it got popular. Dancing baby was worse though.
[+] mindcrime|5 years ago|reply
"Oh yeah, you want a seriously righteous hack, you score one of those orbiting satellites, man. You know, satellites they use to like, do cosmology, and look for oil and stuff?"
[+] jeffrallen|5 years ago|reply
Hacking for feds... Hmm, yeah, think I'll pass on that "offer".
[+] felbane|5 years ago|reply
Great job, citizen! Here are your celebratory linked steel bracelets. Enjoy your vacation!
[+] caiobegotti|5 years ago|reply
Read the disclaimer at the bottom of the page.
[+] karmicthreat|5 years ago|reply
Hack-a-sat is going to be a fun time this weekend. Far enough outside most of our domain knowledge that you have to learn quick and on the fly.
[+] kwesthaus|5 years ago|reply
Are you competing this weekend? I put together a small team for qualifiers and had a blast with the CTF problems. We did well enough to get challenge coins but not to move on to finals.
[+] jamesholden|5 years ago|reply
I have always wanted to do something with satellites. Especially with SpaceX and global satellite internet coming. What can I do/learn? What will be valid in the next 5-10 years? I'm not sure where to start.
[+] Rebelgecko|5 years ago|reply
Cube sats are probably the most accessible way to get involved, other than getting a job where you get paid to work with satellites. "most accessible" is relative, high altitude balloons check a lot of the same boxes and don't require a sponsor to put you on-orbit
[+] non-entity|5 years ago|reply
I've seen tutorial and projects that consume data from satellites, but I imagine there's not much for the hobbyist outside that.
[+] ColanR|5 years ago|reply
I think the true hacker would learn by doing. Good luck!
[+] xconverge|5 years ago|reply
Buy a rtlsdr and start by getting some images from weather satellites
[+] vorpalhex|5 years ago|reply
The shame here is that the PCB isn't easily available. I can supply pan/tilt kits and SDRs, but I can't even get a CAD of their PCB to order a batch.
[+] janekm|5 years ago|reply
The PCB isn't really needed. It's just the ESP32 module and servo driver board (the one you can buy from Adafruit) combined on one PCB, the instructions show how to wire those up separately (I stared at the PCB for a few minutes trying to figure out what it had to do with hacking sats... It's just a motor driver/servo interface PCB).
[+] Taniwha|5 years ago|reply
Looking closely at the PCB I suspect he's really worried that he's going to fuck it up
[+] ColanR|5 years ago|reply
I'm surprised (but maybe I shouldn't be) that there's no mention at all of antennas. I guess it's a lot easier to get a signal from something in line of sight above you.
[+] antihero|5 years ago|reply
I hope they leave this up after DEFCON. It looks really easy to follow and I would like to get back into hacking on hardware when I got a bit more time.
[+] TuringNYC|5 years ago|reply
All the kits are sold out - has anyone found a quick way to get all the parts?
[+] inamberclad|5 years ago|reply
What is the hacking part here? This looks like how to set up a ground station.
[+] AtHeartEngineer|5 years ago|reply
To get started hacking satellites, you've got to communicate with them first
[+] PatrolX|5 years ago|reply
Take the red pill, and find your way there.
[+] amenghra|5 years ago|reply
Small typo at the beginning, seems the microcontroller is ESP32, not EPS32.
[+] ReedJessen|5 years ago|reply
Will there be another run of kits made?
[+] samplatt|5 years ago|reply
They're easy and cheap to buy from arduino stores (or similar). The only part of their shopping list that I don't have in my general "unfinished projects" bin is the pan/tilt gimbal. I've built one manually before but it was a bit crappy.
[+] fit2rule|5 years ago|reply
I wish there were a simple and easy way to connect to a satellite, at the same kind of level of effort as .. say .. connecting to a BBS in the 80's .. and access it, just like an 80's BBS - i.e. upload a message, wait for a response while the thing flies overhead/across the globe, etc.

I guess this project kind of achieves that in a way. If you can build the hardware you can access a very elite messaging system.

It just seems to me to be a great place to put a BBS. I wonder if there are satellites up there that have that kind of interface ..

[+] jibcage|5 years ago|reply
As a matter of fact, there are several! FalconSat-3 is the one most people connect to in the USA. I think there might also be one aboard the ISS, but most people use the ISS for forwarding APRS packets.

You need an amateur radio license to connect to these, but once you have one you can get into all sorts of other radio projects around the world too :)

Edit: The downside, of course, is that you usually only have (at most) a 20-minute connection window before you lose line-of-sight, since these satellites are in LEO.

https://www.amsat.org/falconsat-3/

[+] mensetmanusman|5 years ago|reply
There are a couple nation states that would love to take over starlink once it is activated.
[+] flingo|5 years ago|reply
Why do you think that? Are you just guessing?