This document describes planned changes to the `sattools` repository.
## Background
The `sattools` began as a set of tools to help with tracking satellites using video and photographic cameras. The choice of `C` was one of familiarity with the code. Where possible, available libraries such as `wcslib`, `gsl`, `qfits` and `pgplot` were used. Some of these libraries are hard to build, raising the threshold for using `sattools`.
With `python` becoming more and more popular, it makes sense to port some of the `sattools` functionality over to `python`, and use powerful libraries such as `numpy`, `scipy`, `astropy`, `matplotlib` and `opencv` for the core calculations of these tools. Porting the tools to another language has the added bonus that it is easier to solve mistakes made in designing the `C` code and improve functionality.
## Planned changes
The applications of the `sattools` repository can be divided into three categories;
1. general purpose tools
1. tools for video observing
1. tools for photographic observing
Tools for radio observing have already been developed in their own repository `strf`: https://github.com/cbassa/strf. Porting tools for video observing is currently underway in the `stvid` repository: https://github.com/cbassa/stvid. The tools for photographic observing will live under a future repository, likely to be called `stphot`. An experimental project to use all-sky cameras for satellite observing is being developed in the `asm` repository: https://github.com/cbassa/asm (this could be renamed to `stasm` or `stas`; better suggestions are welcome).