[ianservin]

Hey HN, thrilled my silly little project was posted here. I had been noodling on this idea for quite some time and ran into a bunch of roadblocks early on that prevented me from getting reliable control over the PTZ camera. Once those were overcome, it came together fairly quickly.

I'm looking forward to doing more experiments including integrating my own payloads (thermal and optical) with an off the shelf motion control system. I also have an automotive radar unit coming which may provide some interesting options for cueing without using ADS-B in some situations (with relatively close targets).

[phrotoma]

Just taking this opportunity to point out (in case you haven't read it) that your project is very reminiscent of a fantastic scene from the classic cyberpunk novel Count Zero, in which the main charater Bobby catches a lift from Lucas, some kind of cybervoodoo shaman, in an autonomous limo named "Ahmed" equipped with advanced electronic countersurveilance.

---

"Lucas," Bobby said, his mouth half full of cold fried chicken, "how come it's taking us an hour and a half to get to New York? We aren't exactly crawling.

"Because," Lucas said, pausing for another sip of cold white wine, "that's how long it's taking us. Ahmed has all the factory options, including a first-rate countersurveillance system. On the road, rolling, Ahmed provides a remarkable degree of privacy, more than I'm ordinarily willing to pay for in New York. Ahmed, you get the feeling anybody's trying to get to us, listen in or anything?"

"No, sir," the voice said. "Eight minutes ago our identification panel was infra-scanned by a Tactical helicopter. The helicopter's number was MH-dash-3-dash-848, piloted by Corporal Roberto

"Okay, okay," Lucas said. "Fine. Never mind You see? Ahmed got more on those Tacs than they got on us."

[rithdmc]

This is really cool. Have you considered using something like in the below post to help the 'tracking', in case the 200ms prediction of where the aircraft should be was incorrect?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43643207

[jeffwass]

This is pretty cool project. Have you been able to track satellites with it, eg an ISS flyover?

[ianservin]

I haven't but that should be fairly straightforward to do with TLE data.