Hi All,
I would like to put together a python scripts that would automatically schedule observations based on a few rules. Is there an api available to get the pass predictions and to allow my scripts to schedule observations? Any examples?
T
No current api exists and my request for one was sort of shot down. (I have a script that abuses the GUI end points.)
I won’t be sharing my script tho because it’s hacky and honestly you shouldn’t abuse the GUI endpoints.
thats a shame. seems like a useful part of the api is missing. ill figure something out.
Hello @tomvdb !
We are working towards automation as a feature for Network. Here are a couple of considerations around it:
- Stations (owners) should be able to select their preferred prioritized satellites
- Auto scheduling should take into account satellite stats (and select transmitter per satellite, based on transmitter stats which we need to migrate towards)
- Auto scheduling should take into account satellite passes above multiple ground stations to deduplicate effort (hard problem to calculate efficiently)
- TLEs change all the time. Auto scheduling should take that into account and schedule only for a brief future period
- Will scheduling iterate on every satellite (and then station) or every station (and then satellite)?
Those are just some high-level issues we need to discuss and solve for the very complicated matter of automatic scheduling. You are more than welcome to contribute to the conversation (and with code if feel up to it!) so we can move towards this direction.
Cheers!
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If the intention is to give station owners high priority control over what their station is tracking, then neither the satellite stats nor the deduplication is necessary. The station owner will decide which satellites and transmitters to track regardless of status or duplication. Thus, I assume those features are intended for supporting regular scheduling by non-owners?