I previously made a scrapbook post about my astronomy project called AstroWatching, where you can look at a map of stars and observe information about them. You can look around in a real 3D representation of space, complete with Earth, stars, a galaxy, and a real background of space. I used MongoDB and websockets to power the backend, and there's a database of 100,000+ stars I am pulling from - you can search a star by its ID, so try 11734 for the North Star, for example. I'm happy to make a progress update about the app. Now, there is a setting to enable/disable the Earth in AstroWatching to see stars that are otherwise blocked by it. The Earth is not accurate yet, but in the future, I plan to have the side of the Earth face a certain point space so that it is fully accurate to how it really is. Right now, the Earth is just a spinning sphere. You can also enable/disable the 1,000 brightest stars. Each blue dot is one of the bright stars, and if you disable the 1,000 brightest stars you will find that the brightest parts of the night sky are all covered by a blue dot. In the future, I hope to automatically load representations of stars as the user zooms into some certain part of the screen, as there are many, many more than 1,000 stars. The brightest blue dots have the highest declination and thus are the most northernmost on the celestial sphere, so if you use the 3D viewer and look to the top, you will see the North Star right at the location of the brightest blue dot.
Some problems right now are that the app knows which stars are the 1,000 brightest, but not specifically which is which. I need to figure out how to ID each blue dot so that a user can just click it and get information right away. Also, the 3D background takes way too much data and I need to figure out how to cut that down.
Although I was planning on adding more to this progress update, Arcade is ending, so this will be my last scrapbook post. I really liked Arcade and it motivated me to create new things. You can try AstroWatching here!
eddyzow.net/astrowatching
Github Folder: github.com/eddyzow/eddyzow.github.io/tree/main/docs/astrowatching
Last Commit: github.com/eddyzow/eddyzow.github.io/commit/c73652ed9a890d12f7fe462cafb5eae034019267
A while ago I began work on a robot car I am building just for fun! The car's goal is to reach as high of a speed as possible. That's it - there is no other goal. I built the car in Onshape and chose/ordered the parts. I received the parts, but haven't gotten to build much of the car yet. Unfortunately Arcade will be over when the car is fully built, but I still am having a lot of fun making this car! I designed the car about a month ago, but I didn't make a scrapbook post for my sessions yet.
Latest commit: github.com/eddyzow/robotcar0/commit/e6f2d49925d38e9b2ddffe01d6ac7f6ef88b42ef
Yesterday and today I made a wordle-style game called Passcode! The game involves guessing a six-digit passcode in five guesses or less. For each guess, if a tile turns green, the digit is correct and in the correct spot. If a tile turns yellow, the digit is in the passcode, but not in the correct spot. If a tile turns black, the digit is not in the passcode. Each guess also shows the sum of the error between your guess's digits, and the passcode's digits. A new puzzle is released every day at 8:00 P.M. Eastern Time. I had a lot of fun making this game over 10 hours, and I find it to be really fun! My friends also played it, and they have had some positive reviews as well. There are better instructions for the game through the tutorial. You can play the game with the link below!
Latest Commit: github.com/eddyzow/eddyzow.github.io/commit/d1beee68e5e8728d93e0fd306ba1d1138b3f58ef
Share message for today:
Passcode #2 5/5
⬛ 17
🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨⬛ 18
🟨🟨🟩🟨🟨⬛ 14
🟩⬛🟩🟩⬛🟨 6
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 0
eddyzow.net/passcode
Today I created an app that lets you share with others how many U.S. states you've been to! There's an interactive map of the U.S., and you click the states on the map to select them to show where you have traveled to. Then, you can press the Share button to share a message with your friends about how many states you've been to. I made this app in a couple hours and I personally think it's super cool!
Latest commit link: github.com/eddyzow/eddyzow.github.io/commit/68b96c4606212b1cbbc571ad6d8702bc6fc75dbd
Share message:
I've visited 18 U.S. states, with a total area of 2,116,718 square km! That's 21.53% of the United States!
How do you stack up? ⬇️
eddyzow.net/states
Today I worked on my stargazing/starmap JavaScript application. I decided that today, I would try to make the background and environment of my 3d world more like the celestial sphere. I learned how HDR 3D images worked and incoroporated one of the night sky into my project, so that it would be realistic. I then figured out how to take the data from a star catalog I downloaded with hundreds of thousands of stars and their data, and extracted the 1000 brightest stars. Using the positions of these stars, I was able to draw a map into my 3d world containing the stars and their relative directions. I then figured out how to rotate the map to be exactly overlaid perfectly on top of the HDR image map. In the image attached, the green stars are the data produced from the star database, and they are perfectly overlaid on top of the images of the real stars. My future goal is to make the stars interactive, i.e. when you click them, they will bring up information about the star. I made great progress today and am very proud of my work!
Link to project: eddyzow.net/astrowatching
Link to latest major commit: github.com/eddyzow/eddyzow.github.io/commit/d41d6563de5fab8657693b643ae52182c84e4eb3
yesterday I followed the PCB Hackercard jam to make my very own custom PCB business card! I added astronomy related art to it, made the front a ruler, and added a QR code to the back. It was fun, although it was a little difficult to figure out how to use JLCPCB. Also, one of the parts I wanted to use was out of stock and I had to find a replacement. Other than that, it was fun getting to build a credit-card-sized NFC tag which I will probably flash my contact information on!
Commit List: github.com/hackclub/OnBoard/pull/877/commits
Project Folder: github.com/eddyzow/OnBoard/tree/main/projects/Eddy's%20NFC
I've recently been working on how to update my personal website to better support my new projects! Today I began work on my 3D astronomy star tracker! I've never used Three.js or anything similar before, so today was a lot of testing. I found a tutorial on how to use Three.js, and how to make an earth. I then played around with the settings on my earth 3D model! Later I am hoping to figure out how to translate a list of stars into real stars on the real page! I hope to have the stars be clickable and pull up information about each one. I also want to add a model of the sun and make Earth / planets orbit around the sun accurate.
link: eddyzow.github.io/threejs-test (left click drag to move the camera)
Today I continued work on my Boston MBTA train tracker app! Now users can manually change their station, and if their station has multiple commuter rail lines, all the lines will show up! I'm going to add support for terminal stations like North and South Station soon.
Commit: github.com/eddyzow/eddyzow.github.io/commit/74a445bce44a22a5a8fb0c97c0e39f3cafd3ee92
Link: eddyzow.github.io/mbta
(Still no formatting, but CSS will come last!)
I started making my MBTA Train Tracker app! The goal of the app is to tell people upfront and quickly when their nearest MBTA (Massachusetts rail system) commuter rail train will reach their station. It uses Geolocation and IP to figure out the user's location, finds their closest train station, and then scans the nearby stations to see if there is a train coming. Then it will predict the time the train arrives and report its distance. Here's what it is so far (there is no CSS, but that will come later). I've gotten the API calls and location tracking to work.
Just created light mode for my website in HTML/CSS/JS!
