Smart Radio Telescope

Smart Radio Telescope is the mobile client for a self-built satellite-dish radio
telescope with a motorised Azimuth / Elevation / Polarization mount. It
connects over your local WiFi to the telescope's Raspberry Pi controller and
turns a phone into its control station.

SKY VIEW AND RADIO MAPS
* All-sky dome with stars, constellations and the dish's current pointing
* Radio sky overlays from the Haslam 408 MHz and HI4PI hydrogen-line surveys,
so you can see where the sky is bright at radio wavelengths
* Object catalogue with the Sun, the Moon and radio targets such as Cas A,
Cygnus X, W51, IC 443, M31 and 3C 273, each with a short description and
its rise and set times
* Tap a star or object to point the dish at it

RASTER SCANS
* Drag a rectangle on the sky to map it
* Choose the sweep axis, the pattern, the speed and the number of rows
* Watch the map fill in as a live heatmap while the dish sweeps
* Share the finished scan as an image

SOURCE TRACKING
* Eight bright radio sources ready to observe: Cas A, Cyg A, Tau A, Vir A,
Cen A, Sgr A*, Orion A and Fornax A
* Shows which of them rise high enough at your site
* One tap starts tracking; the mount follows the source across the sky

MOUNT CONTROL
* Big STOP button, homing of all axes or one at a time, wake and sleep
* Go to horizontal (Az/El/Pol) or equatorial (RA/Dec) coordinates, or track
an RA/Dec position
* Travel-range hints and warnings before a target would hit an endstop
* Step buttons with a configurable step size
* Virtual joystick for driving azimuth and elevation by hand: the speed
follows your finger, the dish stops the moment you let go, and a red rim
shows when an axis has reached its travel limit

LIVE TELEMETRY
* Position, motion and homing state of each axis, pushed live from the mount
* Endstop switch levels and the motor controller's temperature
* Live radio signal chart with minimum and maximum
* A clear banner when telemetry goes stale or the mount refuses a command

SYSTEM
* Health of the Raspberry Pi: temperature, load per core, memory, disk and
uptime, plus the firmware and backend versions
* Clean shutdown of the Pi from the app, with a confirmation step
* Works in portrait and landscape

HARDWARE COMPANION
This is a hardware companion app: it does nothing on its own. It requires the
matching open-source telescope hardware and Raspberry Pi backend, which are
part of the same project. The app talks only to a device you run yourself on
your own network — it contacts no external servers, and nothing it reads
leaves that network. For development and classroom demos, the project also
ships a simulator that stands in for the mount.

LOCATION
While the telescope's backend knows no better position than its fallback,
the app asks for the phone's location once per connection — and offers a
button to ask again — and sends it only to that backend. The backend uses
it for pointing, shows it to the telescope's other clients and writes it to
its log; it does not keep it past a restart. The app itself stores no
location. You can also enter the site by hand in the settings; a phone or
GPS position takes precedence over a hand entry.

Built as a school demonstrator for radio astronomy.