#planet pointer

CNC milled and programmed some stuff up for a project for JPL up in Pasadena. It’s a prototype for a moving sign post that points to celestial objects and tracks satellites in real-time. Pretty snazzy. It uses a simple Arduino (for now anyway) to control all the movement and a Teensy that’s eavesdropping on the serial line to cherry-pick out specially formatted comment strings in the movement instructions to change the text and color.... all crammed in to a 4″ pipe AND waterproof. Note that in this version, there’s no pipe covering the guts, and no custom circuit board has been attached, so nothing is weather tight yet. A fun project. I promise more in the near future.