Devlog #10 — Crew, startup & it’s doneLast pieces today.Crew
section first. Pulls from the Open Notify API — who’s on the ISS right
now. Had to route it through a CORS proxy because the API is http-only
and browsers block that from an https page. Filters for ISS crew
specifically, falls back to everyone in space if the filter comes up
empty. If the API dies, shows a graceful “unavailable” message instead
of breaking.Then the startup section — the part
that boots everything. Load saved observer location, fetch TLE, fetch
crew, then the intervals: tick() every second, orbit path refresh every
minute, fresh TLE every 2 hours, crew every 6 hours. Everything on its
own schedule.Finally made it actually easy to run.
Wrote a small Python server file that spins up a local webserver — this
is where my Python comfort zone finally got to shine in this project.
Plus a start.bat that launches the server and opens the app in the
browser in one double-click. And a README so anyone can figure out how
to run it.That’s it. The tracker is done. Live
position, 3D globe, pass predictions, crew list, one-click startup.
Started this barely knowing what a div was.