Really not an issue but some ideas and how can we help build this project out

[Xyleneuk]

Hello, I found your project around Christmas 2023 having just acquired an IC-705 myself.
I have been playing satellites for a few years now using an ic-9700.

Your app is just brilliant, the idea to use Bluetooth and be able to send the frequency / split to the radio amazing (Thank you)

Here are some feature requests / observations to help improve the app (I'd like to help in any way i can, but I'm not a coder!)

As with the comment / user below, the listing for ISS has too many transponder options, as such the screen cannot cope. Ideally we would need just the cross band repeater, SSTV / school contacts on 145.800 and 145.825 which is the digipeater.

It would be helpful to be able to choose the list of satellites and not have every single one listed.
It would be amazing if you could filter the satellite list by max elevation, also show the elevation on an active satellite page.

I was looking at the NOAA weather satellites, I noticed app puts in LSB, however these should be wide FM, I know this can be set on the app and on the radio, but would save some people issues in the future maybe/

I was advised when tuning manually for a linear satellite that you tune on the higher frequency (70cm side)

I've not been outside 9too cold) yet to test linear or FM transmit, however RX is spot on and for linear satellites like RS44, stopping "tuning" and moving to a QSO, then pressing Tuning again will track the qso without too much issue....

Again many thanks for this great app, I think it has great potential and could become very popular with a few minor tweaks.

I also wonder if this could be used with a bluetooth dongle on other radios (icom ofcourse... ic-9700!!)

Wishing you best 73 and look forward to seeing what can be done in the future.

James / M0JFP / WO2I

[brills]

Thanks for the detailed review, James. They are very insightful and listed things that I too hope to work on for further improvements. Please see in-lines.

As with the comment / user below, the listing for ISS has too many transponder options, as such the screen cannot cope.

This glitch has been fixed in v1.0.3. Please help test the new version once it's available.

Ideally we would need just the cross band repeater, SSTV / school contacts on 145.800 and 145.825 which is the digipeater.

I wish there is a better curated list of transponders for popular satellites. For now I'm using what's available on satnogs.org .. I don't think special-casing ISS is a good idea because no one would have time to maintain those special cases.. But please let me know if you have better ideas.

It would be helpful to be able to choose the list of satellites and not have every single one listed.
Like a "my favorite satellites" list? Good idea.

It would be amazing if you could filter the satellite list by max elevation, also show the elevation on an active satellite page.
I agree

I was looking at the NOAA weather satellites, I noticed app puts in LSB, however these should be wide FM, I know this can be set on the app and on the radio, but would save some people issues in the future maybe

I need to look into that. Usually LSB is chosen because there is no transponder with "supported mode".

I was advised when tuning manually for a linear satellite that you tune on the higher frequency (70cm side) [...]

I have not had any success working a linear using my app. I think there is a huge problem with the frequency drift that happens either gradually, or depends on the temperature of the satellite. Which the real boundary of a linear transponder's uplink may not be what's advertised, which violates an assumption SatHunter makes (i.e. one can calculate the uplink frequency with the downlink frequency of a signal, provided precise doppler compensation). I'm by no means an expert on transponder architectures, though.

Thanks again and 73.

Zhuo NE6NE

[ae5au]

@brills First off, well done on the app so far! It was far better than I expected for such a young project with a single contributor.

I've been using the app for tracking downlink and helping to get in the ballpark when I'm operating portable with my 705 as RX and an IC-7000 as TX. I just look at the split frequency to get an idea where to manually tune the transmitter...much better than using a chart.

I'm thinking I will build a CI-V microcontroller interface for the IC-7000 and try to control it with SatHunter via BLE or UDP over Wi-Fi. I have SatHunter compiling and have deployed it to my phone manually.

I've only noticed 2 things...

1. It seems to change the filter mode sometimes on SSB. It did it to me today and I was mid-pass and didn't want to try to troubleshoot but will see if I can work out a way to reproduce.
2. I do wish it would allow me to tune while it was tracking, but as @Xyleneuk mentioned, it is easy to disable tracking and re-enable after settling on another QSO.