I Built a WiFi-Controlled Laser Tracker (Actually Works!)

🚀 SkyPointer – WiFi Controlled Laser Tracker (ESP32 Project) In this video, I build SkyPointer, a WiFi-controlled laser tracking platform powered by the ESP32. Using a dual-axis pan/tilt mechanism, a high-power laser module, and a custom captive portal web interface, the entire system can be controlled directly from a smartphone without requiring any app or internet connection. The ESP32 creates its own WiFi network and automatically launches a modern web dashboard where users can control pan, tilt, laser state, movement modes, and monitor live telemetry in real time. This project is the foundation of a much larger space-tracking platform that will eventually be capable of automatically locating planets, stars, the Moon, and even tracking satellites such as the International Space Station (ISS) and Starlink satellites. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⚡ Features ✅ ESP32 Powered ✅ WiFi Access Point Mode ✅ Automatic Captive Portal ✅ Smartphone Control ✅ Real-Time Telemetry ✅ Virtual Joystick Interface ✅ Laser ON/OFF Control ✅ Fine & Coarse Positioning Modes ✅ Battery Powered Operation ✅ Dual Servo Pan/Tilt Platform ✅ Future Satellite Tracking Support ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🛰️ Future Roadmap Phase 1 • Manual WiFi Laser Tracking • Smartphone Control • Captive Portal Interface Phase 2 • Automatic Object Pointing • Moon Tracking • Planet Selection • Star Database Integration • Deep Sky Object Positioning Phase 3 • Real-Time Satellite Tracking • ISS Tracking • Starlink Tracking • Weather Satellite Tracking • Automatic Orbital Calculations ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🔧 Hardware Used • ESP32 Development Board • Dual Servo Pan/Tilt Mechanism • Green Laser Module • MOSFET Laser Driver Circuit • Li-Ion Battery Pack • Mechanical Mounting Structure • Jumper Wires • Custom SkyPointer Firmware ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📚 Libraries Used • WiFi.h • WebServer.h • DNSServer.h • ESPmDNS.h • ESP32Servo.h • ArduinoJson • AsyncTCP (optional) • ESPAsyncWebServer (optional) • SPIFFS / LittleFS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🎯 Applications • Astronomy • Satellite Tracking • Educational STEM Projects • Robotics • ESP32 Learning • Laser Positioning • Space Observation • DIY Electronics • Wireless Control Systems ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 💡 What You'll Learn • Building an ESP32 Captive Portal • Creating a Smartphone Control Interface • Servo Control Using ESP32 • Laser Switching Using MOSFETs • Real-Time Telemetry Dashboards • Mobile-Friendly Web UI Design • Wireless Robotics Projects ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⚠️ Safety Notice Laser modules can be hazardous if used improperly. Never point lasers at people, animals, vehicles, aircraft, or reflective surfaces. Always follow local regulations and use proper laser safety precautions. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📌 Subscribe for upcoming SkyPointer episodes where we'll add: 🌕 Moon Tracking 🪐 Planet Tracking ⭐ Star Database Navigation 🛰️ ISS Tracking 🛰️ Starlink Tracking 🚀 Automatic Satellite Following ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📁 Download the code & project files here: 👉 https://dhkdude.com/vault #ESP32 #LaserTracker #SkyPointer #DIYElectronics #ESP32Project #CaptivePortal #WiFiControl #ArduinoProject #Robotics #SatelliteTracking #ISS #Starlink #Astronomy #LaserPointer #IoTProject Connect with us here:   / dhkdude     / dhkdude     / dhkdude   https://www.dhkdude.com