12/05/2020

ISS Above Alert Blynk

By snorlaxprime

In this write up, I am re-using the previous IoT LED Strip controlled using Blynk to light up when the ISS (International Space Station) is flying above my house.

If you are wondering what is an International Space Station, you probably wouldn’t be interested in this write up. You can read up the sighting in the following link https://spotthestation.nasa.gov/sightings/

There is also a live ISS Tracking Map where you can see the trajectory of the ISS in realtime here https://spotthestation.nasa.gov/tracking_map.cfm

So lets get started by creating the IoT LED Strip light controlled via Blynk

Step 1. Connecting the Circuit

For this write up, I am assuming you already have the circuit build, if not you can visit the IoT LED Strip for the detail build. I put the circuit here again for referencde.

Step 2. Test the Blynk RESTful API

Now that we have a working Blynk light globe as previously. We can test the Blynk using the RESTful API.

Go to the following location:

https://blynkapi.docs.apiary.io/#reference/0/write-pin-value-via-put/write-pin-value-via-put

Click on “Switch to Console” to test the connection to Blynk. Note hat the format of the http PUT, the text in RED is the parameter that you will need to change.

You will be presented with the following screen where you can enter your Authorisation token from the Blynk App. To get the Auth_token, go to your Blynk app and click on the setting button at the top.

Enter the Auth Token obtained above into the auth_token parameter as shown below. The second parameter pin comes also from the Blynk zeRGBa settings,

In the screen shot above my ZeRGBa output is from V2, I enter V2 in the pin parameter. The next step is to enter the Body parameter which will determine the colour of the LED in my case I am using the RGB value of [“150″,”0”, “150”] as shown below.

You can now click on the “Call Resource” button to test the colour. This should light up your LEDs. You can change the colour with the above configuration as you wish.

Step 3. Setup the IFTTT

Now that you have a working IoT LED Strip that can be called using the Blynk RESTful API, it is time to connect it to the IFTTT. For this you will need an IFTTT account. You can visit the following URL to setup your account https://ifttt.com/

Once you have an account, you can start creating your first Recipe, there are a lot of pre-existing triggers for you to explore, but for this build we are going to start from scratch, so click on the “Create” button.

Once you click create, you can then click on “This” and search for the “space”service.

Then select the “ISS passes over a specific location” trigger. Complete the trigger by choosing the location, you can enter your home address or your nearest town. Then click on “Create Trigger” button at the bottom.

This will then allow you to select the “That” action.

You can then select the “Webhook” action and chose the “Make a web request” action.

Complete the action fields based on the previous Blynk RESTful API that we have tested in the previous step.

The URL is the full URL of the Blynk cloud, in this example it is https://blynk-cloud.com/authtokenfromBlynk/update/V2

The Body contain the colour that you want to setup for your LED Strip when the ISS passed over your location that you have setup.

Then finally review and finish off the recipe.

Click on the “Finish” button, and Congratulations!!!, you can enjoy your build and brag to your friends that when ISS passed over your home you are getting notification.

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