AuroraGo

Context

Aurora can appear suddenly, last minutes, then fade. Travelers need both a sense of the night ahead — forecasts and space weather — and confirmation that light is showing in the sky where they are.

AuroraGo is built as an all-around companion: an outdoor camera device watches a dark patch of sky and scores visible aurora at the user’s location, while the phone app brings forecasts, space-weather context, and alerts together so people can rest indoors and step out when it counts.

Role & scope

Embedded and product work end to end — ESP32-S3 capture with a GC2145 camera, on-device scoring, BLE confidence broadcast, enclosure and power design for cold overnight use, and a companion app for forecasts, status, and alerts.

Approach

The device senses and scores local sky conditions; the phone receives confidence over BLE and layers forecast and space-weather signals for planning. A low-resolution capture loop pauses BLE around DMA, runs frame differencing and a green-hue filter with a noise gate, then resumes advertising. High-res snapshots and Wi-Fi tooling support development; cold nights, condensation, and ambient light shape the hardware constraints.

Outcome

A working capture pipeline, on-device aurora scoring, and BLE confidence broadcast, with PCB and enclosure exploration underway. Still productizing the polished companion UX, sleep budget, cold-battery strategy, and field-tuned detection thresholds.