Hi, it's Matt.
I've made this to see EPIC images looking down on the world from space.
[Fanfare]
In 2015, the DSCOVR satellite was launched
into space, one and a half million kilometers from Earth.
It sits directly between the earth
and the sun in a place known as a Legrange Point.
This is where two massive bodies, for example the earth
and the sun, barely affect a relatively tiny thing like a satellite.
For example, DSCOVR or the James Webb Space Telescope.
The DSCOVR satellite has three scientific instruments.
The first, which looks at the sun, measures its magnetic
field and charged particles to help predict space weather.
The second looks at the earth with a radiometer,
and this measures the atmosphere.
And the third, my favourite, is called EPIC: the Earth
Polychromatic Imaging Camera.
This takes photos of the sunlit side of the earth, but
not just in the visible light spectrum, all the way from infrared to ultraviolet.
And this is so valuable for so many different scientific research projects.
But most importantly of all, it makes really, really pretty pictures.
From its position directly between the Earth and the sun,
EPIC is always looking at the sunlit side of the earth.
So that means that by taking photos every few hours while the earth spins
beneath it, that means it captures images of the whole globe.
NASA publishes
these images online a day or two after they're taken for anyone to see.
And I even follow a Twitter account (an unofficial one) that posts these images.
But I've always thought it'd be cool if I had a way of displaying these photos.
Fast forward to last year when I spotted that round screens had become available
for hobbyists to easily use in their projects.
With EPIC, I had the perfect excuse.
So I bought the Pimoroni 2.1 inch Hyperpixel
Round screen and a Raspberry Pi Zero W to power it
hardware wise.
That's pretty much it.
But I also needed a case, so I searched to see if anyone had already designed one.
And I found this.
It's the "Printminion M2 i3" 3D printable case
which I downloaded the files for and printed on my 3D printer.
The only thing it needed is a right angled
USB cable so that it will fit properly inside the case.
So far, so good.
But the tricky bit, as always, is
making the software to make it actually work
and then also getting the Raspberry
Pi to start the software as soon as it turns on.
Yeah, overall it was only about two or three days worth of work,
but that was spread over a whole year because I am very easily distracted.
Now, while I've done some web programming before.
I've never written any full graphical software.
So knowing that it could do stuff with images,
I chose to use the PyGame module for Python to write this in.
Here's how it works.
It looks up NASA's Epic Daily Blue Marble API,
which lists the most recently available images.
It then downloads them and resizes them to fit the screen,
and then it'll show them one by one so then you can see every part of the world.
Every few hours it looks up the API again
to see if there are any new photos, and if there are it updates them.
I don't know about you, but I think this is so cool.
I'm really proud of it.
I've had it out on the side and I've just found myself
staring at it because the photos are so pretty!
And it's not
like they're live, but you know, they're from a couple of days ago.
And when Europe rolls around, up here, I'm in that photo.
And it's the whole world, so are you, you're in it too!
If you find this as cool as I do, you can actually make your own.
I have linked to the code in the description
below, so if you want to have a go, please do.
And I'm sure this isn't the last time I make something like this.
I am at @MattGrayYes on all the socials, and I've recently released a newsletter.
If you want to sign up to that and get stuff from me in your email inbox,
you'll find more info about that at mattg.co.uk
That'll do.
I'm bored now.