satnogs-obscalendar

Create an iCal file for a set of SatNOGS observations for a ground station.

See an example for SatNOGS Ground Station 834 - Valpo WIRED Lab 1 at: example (temporary URL)

Installation

There are two options prepared for installing the needed packages: virtualenv and conda.

virtualenv

Option 1:: manual

# create a new environment in the root of the repository
virtualenv venv

# activate the new environment
source venv/bin/activate

# ensure pip is from the new environment under folder: venv/bin/pip
which pip
# install packages
pip install -r requirements.txt

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Option 2:: with direnv (my favorite)

# (set up direnv in your shell, see its docs)

# declare the .envrc as safe to run
# (the .envrc file is already in the repository)
direnv allow

# ensure pip is from the new environment under folder: .direnv/bin/pip
which pip

# if so, then install the packages
pip install -r requirements.txt

conda

Install the packages listed in the environment.yml file to create a conda environment.

conda env create -f environment.yml

# activate the environment
conda activate obscalendar

System python

It is recommended that you use a virtual environment of some sort instead of installing packages system- or user-wide.

pip install requests requests-cache arrow ics should also install the required packages.

Usage

$ ./obscalendar.py -h

usage: obscalendar.py [-h] [-o OUTFILE] [--start START] [--end END] [--cache [SECONDS]]
                      gs [gs ...]

Create an iCalendar file of SatNOGS observations.

positional arguments:
  gs                    Ground station ID

options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -o OUTFILE, --out OUTFILE
                        Output file (default stdout)
  --start START         Earliest observation start
  --end END             Latest observation end
  --cache [SECONDS]     Cache API requests (default: 300)

Automatic updates

do-updates.sh is a script for using with cron that:

• Sets up the proper Python environment (with conda)
• Runs the script with the desired options
• Copies the ICS file to a server

crontab line:

# m h  dom mon dow   command
07  *   *   *   *   time $HOME/path/to/do-updates.sh

The script is included here merely as an example and must be modified for your situation.