@Sat Orbiter Locator+ by Survivorsoft

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.handango.com/brainstore/PlatformProductDetail.jsp?siteId=311&platformId=2&productType=2&productId=95362&catalog=30' target='_blank'>http://www.handango.com/brainstore/...5362&catalog=30</a><br /><br /></div><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/satorbiter.jpg" /> <br /><br />"@Sat puts the wonder of space in the palm of your hand. Designed with simplicity in mind, @Sat makes it easy to track and display real-time trajectories of spacecraft such as the International Space Station, the Hubble Telescope, the Shuttle, and the Mars Rovers. Download the latest images from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Mars Rovers Missions and keep up to date on the latest space exploration headlines..."<br /><br />Since a lot of you have space fever this week, I thought this would be an appropriate piece of software to look at. :-) [Affiliate]

[Majestic]

Here's what "I" am looking forward to! Nice looking software. Now I just want it for my i600. :)

Quoted from the company website:
@Sat will be available for Microsoft Smartphones January 15ht.

[Tierran]

I was interested...until I saw its only WM2k3 :cry:

[Jon Westfall]

Anyone using this? I didn't see a trial, I'd love this software but want to hear some reactions first.

[corphack]

interesting that there's no "trial" or "evaluation" period...

[Tierran]

Well, I was ready to use it sight unseen when I went there, even without the trial until I saw it was for WM2k3. I emailed the devs and just said I hoped they were going to do a PPC2k2 version. The really cool guys over at Survivorsoft sent me an email about 20 minutes later with the program and told me that they didn't feel it would perform well on PPC2k2 but said I was welcome to try it out and see if I agreed. So after installing the .NET SP2 like they said, I installed the software.

Survivorsoft...your program is awesome. This program is everything I wanted it to be. I'm running it on a Toshiba e740 and while I will admit it is a bit slow at times, it is not unmanagably slow. I highly recommend anyone who was thinking of getting this to go buy it. It does exactly what it says. Gives some pictures, and of course the important locations of things in the sky as well as some news.

I wish I had a WM2k3 device to compare this next to to see how it runs...but if its not /that/ slow on my Toshiba...so I can only imagine that it runs really well on anything better.

[ironguy]

Can you input a vector for any satellite or just the ones they mention? I test and will fly a scientific satellite and would like to enter the orbit so it could be included.

Is it customizable in this way?

[Kevin Remhof]

Anyone using this? I didn't see a trial, I'd love this software but want to hear some reactions first.

You should see a review here on Pocket PC Thoughts in the near future. I'm working on it right now.

[applejosh]

For the most part this program is pretty cool, but I noticed that I can't save the Mars Rover images for offline viewing. The Hubble images get saved to the installation directory (SD card in my case), but the Mars images are loaded dynamically. Anyone else see this? If this is true, this seems like a pretty big oversight. I emailed the support over at survivorsoft, so hopefully I'll hear back from them about this.

EDIT: I heard back, and they are aware of this and are working on it.

Cheers!
Josh

[Pat Logsdon]

I just purchased this and it looks really nifty! Is anyone else having problems getting new info/pictures to download, though? I'm stuck with what's in the initial download - no pictures and old news. :(

[applejosh]

I was able to get the downlaods to happen after I downloaded and installed the updated .NET service pack. (Link on their site.) Before I did that, I couldn't get stuff to update, and I got errors a lot. Afterwards, no problems.

Cheers!
Josh

[fhunter]

Hi everyone! Thank you very much for your interest in @Sat. We can't tell you how gratifying it is to see our work being appreciated.

Though we're incredibly busy right now, we wanted to pass along some comments and answer some questions we've seen here:

1. Tierran, you owe us one! We sent you that version of @Sat with the condition that you reported back your results and--if you liked the app--posted a nice review for us in Handango! Just kidding... Your kind words in this forum will count as the review... (Good thing I found this forum. Now you're off the hook.) I'm glad it worked! For everyone else wishing for a 2002 version, I would wait for a trial of the 2003 version so you can make sure that it will work properly on your device. It should, but if the device is old, .Net might run very slow. Unfortunately we don't have the support resources to handle all the issues that will come from trying to support 2002 right now.

2. No trial/evaluation version is available right now. Sorry, guys, but we're a very very small company, and had to make a choice between working on a trial version or getting in all the features we wanted. We have 3 more important features we need to get in (one of them Josh already brought up on this forum) and then we might look into a trial version.

3. Ironguy: Nope, you're currently restricted to the orbiters we provide with the application. (We wanted to make an easy to-use-interface and focus on the "big name" orbiters. However, the math engine can handle any orbiter as long as we have NORAD telemetry for it. So actually, you could potentially hack it to follow your satellite. The NORAD telemetry is kept in a file called TLE.txt. You could modify any one of those entries. You could then even get overpass information for your satellite. (Make sure not to connect to the network though because the TLE.txt file will automatically get updated.)

4. Surgical Snack: Sounds like you're missing Service Pack 1. You can download it on Microsoft's site:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=1F62A2A3-7282-4BA9-B26B-2267E972501D&amp;displaylang=en (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=1F62A2A3-7282-4BA9-B26B-2267E972501D&displaylang=en)

5. Some people are asking, "What in the devil is that white glove floating around?" That's just a little joke. (Kind of sad, eh?) During the first American space walk in 1965, the Gemini 4 astronaut Edward White lost a glove. Though that glove has most likely reentered the atmosphere, we thought it would be fun to have it make an appearance in @Sat once in a while. There are some other strange sightings you may notice over time...

6.Majestic, the Smartphone version is ready to go. However, your i600 is based on Windows Mobility 2002 and unfortunately there's no feasible way to update a Windows 2002 to run .Net applications. (Trust me we don't like this any more than you do.) The only Smartphone available that will run @Sat is the SPV e200. And we don't even have this here in the US. We're eager to support the i600 (if it comes out with 2003) because we'll be able to take advantage of that excellent GPS feature of the device!

[Tierran]

I actually posted a similar review to what I put here on Handango...I dunno why its not there yet. I don't think any of these sites like me. I posted reviews for all the hardware I ever bought at New Egg and I never see them show up :(