Stellarium

Simpler update of satellites.json from file

Asked by Paul Gilmartin

This is a wish rather than a bug.

Celestrak has an appeal out for users to use less bandwidth. Suppose I
have several accounts. (I have, all belonging to one human being.) I can
download all the TLE files with a shell script using Curl. Then I can
update satellites.json from the concatenation of those files.

It's cumbersome -- I need to navigate to the TLE file each time I want
to update satellites.json. I'd like the path to that TLE file to be kept in
config.ini, and loaded each time I start Stellarium. No extra work for
the user, and less bandwidth load for Celestrak. Might this be done?

Another motive I have is that because of firewalls/proxies (is Stellarium
proxy-savvy?) I can't access all my sources at the same time. But I can
script the process so that if any source can't be reached it simply
retains the former file rather than deleting all satellites from the
unreachable source.

Thanks,
Paul Gilmartin

Question information

Language:
English Edit question
Status:
Solved
For:
Stellarium Edit question
Assignee:
Bogdan Marinov Edit question
Solved by:
Paul Gilmartin
Solved:
Last query:
Last reply:
Revision history for this message
Paul Gilmartin (paulgboulder) said : 		#1

(more)
It appears that when I select "update from files", it updates existing
entries in satellites.json (I can tell -- timestamps in TLEs change),
but it does not add any new entries from my selected TLE file, even
though I have checked "On update, add all new satellites from the
selected sources."

I can reproduce this problem by copying in the original satellites.json;
editing it down to just a couple entries, and doing "update from files".
Those entries I left are updated; no new entries are added.

I'll consider this a bug.

Thanks,
Paul Gilmartin

Revision history for this message
Paul Gilmartin (paulgboulder) said : 		#2

Suggestion for an FAQ (after help from Alexander Wolf):

Adding Satellite Elements from a Local File

This may be a way to share Satellite Elements among various
users on various systems without less use of the sometimes
scarce bandwidth of Elements servers, or of supplying
elements not available from some servers.

Format your file in TLE format, similar to

    http://celestrak.com/NORAD/elements/visual.txt

(A detailed description is in:
    http://celestrak.com/NORAD/documentation/tle-fmt.asp
)
Use a browser to navigate to this file with a URL with the scheme
"file:///...". Copy that URL and paste it into the Configuration
dialog at "Configuration->Plugins->Satellites->Configure->Sources".
Click on "Settings->Update now". "Save settings as default".

Thanks again,
gil

Revision history for this message
Paul Gilmartin (paulgboulder) said : 		#3

Suggestion for an FAQ (after help from Alexander Wolf):

Adding Satellite Elements from a Local File

This may be a way to share Satellite Elements among various
users on various systems without less use of the sometimes
scarce bandwidth of Elements servers, or of supplying
elements not available from some servers.

Format your file in TLE format, similar to

    http://celestrak.com/NORAD/elements/visual.txt

(A detailed description is in:
    http://celestrak.com/NORAD/documentation/tle-fmt.asp
)
Use a browser to navigate to this file with a URL with the scheme
"file:///...". Copy that URL and paste it into the Configuration
dialog at "Configuration->Plugins->Satellites->Configure->Sources".
Click on "Settings->Update now". "Save settings as default".

Thanks again,
gil

Revision history for this message
Alexander Wolf (alexwolf) said : 		#4

Alexander Wolf suggests this article as an answer to your question:
FAQ #2464: “Adding Satellite Elements from a Local File”.