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Mimic Project Introduction
The purpose of the ISS Mimic project is to create a 1% scale 3d-printed model of the International Space Station (ISS) that utilizes hobbyist electronic equipment to rotate all of the moving joints on the ISS using actual data transmitted from the ISS in real time. Our objective is to enable anyone in the world to visualize exactly what the ISS is doing at any time in order to spread public spaceflight awareness and further STEM engagement.
All of the Computer Aided Design (CAD) models, 3D printing files, and software is all completely open source, and anyone who wants to modify/improve our original project is free to do so. Our intended audience is anyone in world, but mostly libraries, museums, classrooms, anywhere that could benefit from increased awareness of the work being done in space to improve life on Earth.
The model itself is 3D-printed as much as possible, with small motors embedded in every section that needs to rotate. The ISS has 12 rotating interfaces, specifically to accomplish positioning of the solar arrays and radiators. The popular STEM-friendly Arduino microcontrollers are used to control the motors and a Raspberry Pi computer is used to retrieve the ISS data (telemetry) and provide it to the Arduinos and also display that information in an informative way to the users. The information is designed to be easily understandable by people new to spaceflight but also interesting to hard-core space enthusiasts.
The ISS Mimic project is a 100% volunteer effort from space enthusiasts who just want to share our interest in human space exploration.
The project is still in-work; however, we have made some significant accomplishments. We currently have a completed, fully-functional model that has all 12 joints rotating successfully. Despite having all 12 joints functional, we do not consider the physical model to be complete. We intend to improve the printability of each module and take steps to lower to total cost of the project. Once the actual physical design is complete, the CAD models used to print will be added to the public project files.
On the software side, we have fully completed the code that obtains the telemetry from the ISS and transmits it to the Arduino microcontrollers. The Arduino code that receives this data and controls each of the 12 motors has also been functionally completed. The only work left to be done on the software side is additional code to display the telemetry is a meaningful and educational manner to the users.