When Nintendo was putting together the final hardware for what would become the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) back in the '80s, it's unlikely that it would ever have envisioned the humble hardware being used for something like tracking the International Space Station. As the ISS was launched in 1998, that wouldn't have made much sense anyway!
But here we are in 2020, where everything needs to be connected to the Internet including toasters and fridges, so why not the NES? Software developer Vi Grey has created and released an International Space Station tracker for the Nintendo Entertainment System, which is pretty rad.
Using a NES game developed from the ground up and a device to send ISS tracking data to the game in the form of button presses through the controller port, the ISS' position is displayed over a map in real-time, showing where the ISS is at that precise moment.
Here's how it looks running on the NES:
Let's hand you over to Vi Grey to explain how this interesting project came to pass:
"Is this project a bit esoteric? Sure! But it's a treat to see the International Space Station flying overhead, knowing that there are currently 3 people in there, knowing that Bob Benkhen and Doug Hurley made history just months ago as the first people to make it to the ISSin a private spacecraft, knowing they made it back home safely. The ISS may only be about 400 km above the earth at any moment, but it is still a shining beacon of curiosity and hope of scientific progress.
"My friend had sent me a picture of his family camping with the ISS shining above the camp fire. Later that same night, out of pure coincidence, I saw the ISS flying overhead while taking a walk. The thought of displaying the ISS position in real-time with an NES was born at that moment.
"Still, why the NES? It may not seem like it, but the old video game consoles like the Nintendo Entertainment System and Atari 2600 are actually computers. Those two game consoles actually used essentially the same processor as the Apple II and Commodore 64. A computer's job is to take inputs and produce outputs from that. When you play a game like Super Mario Bros, you give the game inputs like pressing A and the output of Mario jumping happens. If a computer can track the ISS and the NES is a computer, then an NES should be able to track the ISS.
"The NES is a computer and honestly one of my favorite computers to program for. This project, like many others I have created, is an attempt to show people that very fact. The NES may not run anywhere near as fast as your phone, but it still is about 40 times faster than the computer used for the Apollo 11 mission.
"Since the beginning of development of this project, care was taken to make sure others can play around with this project without the need for special hardware. This project will run on the FCEUX and Mesen NES emulators with a single program called a Lua script."
A blog post describing this project in more detail along with instructions for readers to play with it using a NES emulator can be found here. Let us know what you think about this novel use of NES hardware with a comment below.
[source vigrey.com]
Comments 21
Introducing:
Nintendo's Brand New
NES.
Nintendo's
Easily Creeping at
Space Stations
Pointless, but neat.
Cool, I guess. Good for them.
Why aren't you bringing this to NES online Nintendo? If you won't let me play earthbound the least you can do is let me track a satellite.
I am no computer programmer. But I just love the setup for this ‘game’. Imagine if something like this could be built for the Switch.
I am happy to say that I am a bit of a Space Geek so this thrills me.
More like the first ever NES Utility App!
That is pretty cool. Not much else to it but it is cool. I mean I don't think it will gather a following at all due to the nes being not the best for this stuff. I hope things go well for them anyway because as I said. Pretty cool.
That's really cool!
That's neat, how are you able to do this stuff!?
If you've never seen the International Space Station go by, I highly recommend it. NASA has a spot-the-iss page, and it lists the times you can see it (relative to your location any where in the world.) It looks like a star going across the sky. It's visible at evenings & mornings, when it reflects sunlight. Its cool. When was the last time you saw something in space with people on it go by?
https://spotthestation.nasa.gov/
Creep away, @HotGoomba If you've never seen the ISS go by before, it's pretty cool.
https://spotthestation.nasa.gov/
Meanwhile I have a raspberry pi 3 and I don't know what to do with it. Maybe those guys could cure cancer with it instead of doing some impressive but thoroughly useless stuff with their NES
Ground Control to Major Tom
People know that the NES was originally intended to connect to the "internet," right? At least that's my understanding of what that unused port on the bottom of the console was. I believe original concepts for it were for people to check stocks, sport scores, and order a pizza - which is more fitting with the name Family Computer (Famicom).
Epic. Love stuff like that.
@Heavyarms55 Somehow, the more pointless or useless a computer app is, the cooler it is...I mean, he definitely didn't do this for any profit, LUL
Science is real! Such a cool and commendable project, like a time machine in a DeLorean.
Stargazing never fails to take my mind off of all the terrible news here on Terra.
So, now we can get an nes browser, or at-least an n64 or Snes one
Why does the video title say "on an NES"?
How in the world does anyone pronounce NES so that they need to use "an" instead of "a"?
These are the important questions!!
This feels like a product of a different generation and by that I mean in a really good way. If this, in some way, had come in the 80's it would have been mind blowing. There was PC site that did something similar and at the time it felt like you had the world at your command. Great job.
...huh.
That's pretty neat.
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