Sitrec is Open Source on GitHub - How You Can Contribute

[Mick West]

I've made Sitrec (Metabunk's situation recreation tool) open source.

https://github.com/MickWest/sitrec

This means anyone can look at the source code to see how it works. You can also make you own version of the code, install it on your own server, make changes to the code, and request your changed be merged in with Metabunk's version.

The link above goes to the home page for Sitrec on Github. It will show you the top level view of the code, and a variety of menus and links.

"Readme" (or just scrolling down a bit) will give you instructions on how to build the code and install it on your own server.

"Activity" will show the most recent published changes to the code:
https://github.com/MickWest/sitrec/activity

"Issues" will take you to the issue tracking database. Here you can report bugs, make suggestions, or request new features
https://github.com/MickWest/sitrec/issues

 

[andy172]

Mick, how do you ingest all of the satellite / astronomical data? Is there a way to provide the data sources?

 

[Mick West]

Mick, how do you ingest all of the satellite / astronomical data? Is there a way to provide the data sources?

Current starlink data comes from
https://celestrak.org/NORAD/elements/supplemental/sup-gp.php?FILE=starlink&FORMAT=tle
(historically TLE data is manually added)

Satellite position calculation is from satellite.js
https://github.com/shashwatak/satellite-js

Stars from the Yale Bright Star Catalog and the IAU Catalog of Star Names (IAU-CSN)
https://github.com/MickWest/sitrec/tree/main/data/nightsky

Astronomy position calculations (including planets) comes from Astronomy Engine
https://github.com/cosinekitty/astronomy

 

[AstroPony]

Great work on the Readme!

As a new joiner (literally just registered) and software engineer, this is door in which I can possibly start to contribute - not only to the repo, but also to the cause.

 

[Mick West]

Great work on the Readme!

As a new joiner (literally just registered) and software engineer, this is door in which I can possibly start to contribute - not only to the repo, but also to the cause.

Welcome! It does need quite a bit more documentation, but right now I'm doing a restructuring to make Sitches data driven. So things are somewhat in flux. I hope over the next week or so to get in-app editing, saving and loading of arbitrary sitches that cover 90% of what I've been doing so far with editing code.

 

[sigmops]

I know Github is the appropriate place for a bug report, but there is something amiss with my account there. I apologize for posting this here. I also wasn't sure if it would warrant a new thread. Please remove if its not appropriate.


In a thread on /r/ufos/ Flarkey provided a link to Sitrec for a recent pilot sighting. That link does not render for me and an error is present in the browser console. (However Sitrec does render fine after removing all of the URL parameters.)

I am running Ubuntu Linux 20.04 and the provided link does not render on either:

• Firefox 121.0.1 (uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger are installed but neither report blocking anything)
• Chromium Version 120.0.6099.224 (Official Build) snap (64-bit) with no plugins or extensions

The provided, shortened Sitrec link:

https://www.metabunk.org/u/lS5Mvh.html

later expanded to:

https://www.metabunk.org/sitrec/?sitch=nightsky&data=~(olat~51.48~olon~-3.16~lat~39.35449189994994~lon~-87.72930324840814~alt~821.999999999467~startTime~'2024-01-20T02*3a16*3a46.026Z~az~-85.53907759661837~el~6.605151721014493~fov~32~p~(x~-16233969.523814997~y~-272139.51542139146~z~-8550193.84724639)~u~(x~0~y~1~z~0)~q~(x~-0.3932692476076254~y~-0.7470623934145473~z~0.1036948396244999~w~0.5258178957273228)~f~693~pd~false~ssa~true~sfr~false~ssn~false~rehostedFiles~(~'https*3a*2f*2fwww.metabunk.org*2fsitrec-upload*2f15857*2fstarLink-2024-01-23-db1a18d13015f4cace358ec184808d43.txt)~rhs~true)_

Both Chromium and Firefox render a toolbar on the right of the window but the rest is blank white. Both browsers have an error in the console, but the error is different in each.

The error I get in Firefox's console is:

Uncaught (in promise) TypeError: r.u4.up is undefined
parseURLDataAfterSetup https://www.metabunk.org/sitrec/index.f69fb993dafb9ff56bbf.bundle.js:1
8138 https://www.metabunk.org/sitrec/index.f69fb993dafb9ff56bbf.bundle.js:1
index.f69fb993dafb9ff56bbf.bundle.js:1:1274139

The error I get in Chromium's console is:

Uncaught (in promise) TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'copy')
at CSituation.parseURLDataAfterSetup (index.f69fb993dafb9ff56bbf.bundle.js:1:1274147)
at index.f69fb993dafb9ff56bbf.bundle.js:1:406000
parseURLDataAfterSetup @ index.f69fb993dafb9ff56bbf.bundle.js:1
(anonymous) @ index.f69fb993dafb9ff56bbf.bundle.js:1

Both errors seem to indicate a problem parsing the URL data

Happy to provide any other details

 

[Jim A]

I know Github is the appropriate place for a bug report, but there is something amiss with my account there. I apologize for posting this here. I also wasn't sure if it would warrant a new thread. Please remove if its not appropriate.

I experienced the same issue on that URL, I've opened a PR on the repo with a change that fixes the issue for me when running locally. If you want to view the sitch in the meantime, you could check out my branch from the PR and run it locally using the instructions on the GitHub readme.

I'm going to put together a docker image shortly to make it a bit easier to run your own Sitrec server locally, I'll update this post with a link when that's available.

 

[Mick West]

I experienced the same issue on that URL, I've opened a PR on the repo with a change that fixes the issue for me when running locally. If you want to view the sitch in the meantime, you could check out my branch from the PR and run it locally using the instructions on the GitHub readme.

Thanks!
Merged your PR, and redeployed Sitrec v1.0.3a: 24-01-23 17:04 PT

 

[Mick West]

Thanks!
Merged your PR, and redeployed Sitrec v1.0.3a: 24-01-23 17:04 PT

The issue there was I was defining a camera in the Sit object using an object called "mainCamera", but some crufty code relied on this.mainCamera (where this = Sit), and then there was a global value called "mainCamera"

I've removed all references to variables called "mainCamera", and the main camera is now accessed via the node manager. All of this is part of A) standardizing setup across all sitches and B) moving towards a purely data-driven setup flow.

 

[sigmops]

Working in both Chromium and Firefox now

Thanks!

 

[mmtmn]

Cool! I did not expect it to be built using mainly JS! Thanks for making this open sourced!

 

[FoxMulder]

Are all the adjustable options in Sitrec documented somewhere? Like what exactly "SL flare angle" does?

 

[Mick West]

Are all the adjustable options in Sitrec documented somewhere? Like what exactly "SL flare angle" does?

Not really. There's some discussion in threads, but there really needs to be more formal documentation.

SL Flare angle is the range of angles at which a satellite is considered to be reflecting the sun. Bigger angle, more satellites will reflect. The default of 5° is derived from observing actual starlink in videos.

 

[flarkey]

Hey @Mick West - is there any way in sitrec to filter the satellites in the "look view" to only show those that are indicated to be flaring in the "main view"...? This screenshot from the recent 747 case shows that there are only 3 flaring satellites, but the look view shows tens of potentially visible satellites. Only those flaring should be shown.

edit - found it. View menu > Sat Cut-Off> increase to 0.125.

 

[Mick West]

edit - found it. View menu > Sat Cut-Off> increase to 0.125.

Yeah, maybe I could improve the defaults there.

 

[saucerpilot]

Any chance text could be displayed with an outline, so that it always stands out even against a similarly colored background? Such as:

Also, can there be an option to set the time locally, according to the chosen display time zone?

EDIT: By the way if there is an extra yellow horizontal line that isn't supposed to be there, it is because of the crude way that I made the text outline example.

 

[flarkey]

Any chance text could be displayed with an outline, so that it always stands out even against a similarly colored background? Such as:
View attachment 71521

Also, can there be an option to set the time locally, according to the chosen display time zone?

and the flare band hidden from the 'look' view?

 

[Mick West]

I'll look into these on monday