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Spinetab

Orbit

Your window on orbit.

Follow the ISS. Open a second view to share the work.

0 tabs0 polling feeds

Connecting to the live source…

With Spinetab
Preparing the live view…
Inspect the actual requests
Recent HTTP reads0 in this mode

    Requests are counted where they run. Background polling stays active during this comparison; all views pause after two minutes away.

    Try it across tabs

    Section titled “Try it across tabs”

    Open a second tab using the button above. Choose Map in one and Globe in the other: each view stays independent while both receive the same position. The tab badges show the latest position timestamps.

    Choose Compare per-tab connections to see each tab start its own polling schedule, then return to sharing. Expand Inspect the actual requests to see when each HTTP read starts.

    The globe follows the reported position. Its trail joins positions received in this session; it does not predict the ISS orbit. The readout uses the provider’s timestamp, altitude and speed.

    How it works

    Section titled “How it works”

    Spinetab polls Where the ISS at? and writes each complete position into a tab-local TanStack Query cache. Components read that cache as usual. They do not run a second polling loop.

    orbit-feed.ts
    import { polling, pollEvery } from "spinetab/polling";
    import { bindQuery } from "spinetab/tanstack-query";
    

    const positions = polling<OrbitSample>(
      "https://api.wheretheiss.at/v1/satellites/25544",
    );
    

    const binding = bindQuery(spinetab, positions, {
      queryClient,
      queryKey: ["iss"],
      reconcile: "latest",
      ...pollEvery(5_000, { whileHidden: true, onJoin: "await" }),
    });
    

    // Release the subscription when the view unmounts.
    binding.unsubscribe();

    This excerpt assumes an existing client and query cache. The Astro and TanStack Query recipe covers configuration, mounting and cleanup. The demo keeps polling in hidden tabs during the comparison so both modes have the same eligibility.

    The complete source includes position validation, cache updates and cleanup.

    The live API is public and needs no key. Provider outages and browser suspension can interrupt the experiment; the demo reports those states rather than substituting generated positions. Geography is made with Natural Earth.