Live image from the ISS on your touch bar ! πŸš€

A small window live from space at your fingertips :rocket:

Here what it looks like on my touch bar



Hi everyone :grinning:, I wanted to share my simple button that adds an image taken from the thumbnail of the International space station stream on stream and displays it on your touch bar

You can download it here (Version 2):
ISS Viewer v2.bttpreset (160.6 KB)

Currently the image is pulled every 60 seconds from this URL:

https://ustvstaticcdn1-a.akamaihd.net//i//channel//live//1_17074538,192x108,b:2021091211.jpg

This concept should work with any steam where you can get a thumbnail, you just have to change the URL

Possible upgrades

  • The ISS stream becomes dark when it is on the dark side of the Earth, maybe someone could change the script to put a placeholder image instead of just a black one
  • It would have been nice to be able to get the stream realtime, but that would mean loading it up and BTTT does not seem do handle videos or GIF

Limitations

  • I would advise against putting a shorter refresh time as the video thumbnail is not updated that quickly
  • I'm not 100 % sure the URL is going to work long time as it was generated when I accessed the stream using my web browser and not their API
  • There seems to be a glitch right now if you tick the "Show Only icon, no text" option, it hides the whole button even when the image is updated by the script. The only solution I'v found is putting a space as the widget identifier and no enabling the option

Changelog
I'v updated the url to always get the current date

hey its working :slight_smile: but the footage is just a black screen atm?

It’s great to hear !
Yes, when the ISS is on the dark side of the earth, there is not sunlight to view the earth so we have to wait for it to get back in the light. If i remember correctly you can see 8 sunrises per day because the iss goes 8 times around the earth per day

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