Hello Folks
[This is a re-post since my original announcement hasn't appeared.]
This is to announce the availability of mtrack version 0.2 beta. Mtrack is
an X window based satellite tracking program, it is available under the
GPL and of course comes with full source. The program provides a window
which contains a map along with the sub-satellite point and footprint, as
well as the users home location. Information about the satellite is
provided below the map.
The program can also display a table showing future visibility, the
visibilty at a large number of other locations, and updated keplerian
elements. A full data editor is built in to allow for the addition,
deletion and modification of the satelite data, location data and user
preferences. The program can also import NASA two line elements directly.
There is a choice of maps, and the colours of the map, footprint,
satellite and user can all be changed.
It is available from ftp://ftp.sgbt.com/ you will find two new files,
mtrack-0.2.tar.gz and mtrack-0.2.tar.bz2. The new mtrack program has the
following updates:
- Uses the free GTK+ widget set (http://www.gtk.org/)instead of Motif. This
means that it is buildable by anyone. I think it looks a lot nicer too.
- Year 2000 compliant, it too would suffer from the Year 2000 appearing as 100.
- Increased the maximum number of satellites from 200 to 500.
- Included updated keplerian elements.
The majority of the work I have done has involved the first point, the
basic satellite tracking algorithms and functionality have not changed
compared to the original Motif version.
The program as released is considered Beta, and I have thought of a few
things I would like to modify slightly before I make the final 0.2
version. All of the changes I can think of are cosmetic and I will
probably issue a small patch set as well as new tar files when it becomes
available.
Please download the program and give it a go. The TODO file included
within the tar file details additions I would like to make. One of the
items is to add help texts, this does not require any programming
expertise, if you would like to help with that, drop me a line. My time is
going to become limited in the next few weeks (buying a house in the UK)
so don't expect much development for a little while.
Jonathan HB9/G4KLX in sunny Zurich
