Your ISS-Above has just arrived and you're wondering if you have to be some sort of geek to set it up. Luckily not. It's very easy and help is at hand. Start with the video on the right.

Quickstart instructions can be downloaded (they are included when we ship the ISS-Above);

ANY PROBLEMS AT ALL, EMAIL SUPPORT@ISSABOVE.COM
QUOTING YOUR ISS-ABOVE NUMBER (IT LOOKS LIKE HD-999).

This short video takes you through opening the box - to connecting your ISS-Above to your Home Router + TV + power and then configuring the location.

Tech stuff for where you might get stuck

Ethernet "wired" connection

The first time you set up you ISS-ABOVE, you need to connect it to a TV and your router (or Ethernet port in your office or school). If your router is a long way from your TV, you may want to borrow a long cable (funny, right), or see if you can haul a small TV or monitor to your router, as long as it has an HDMI connection.

The reason it's important to use a TV on first start-up is that you want to note the IP address of the ISS-ABOVE. You'll need that later.

Finding the ISS-Above's IP address

When your ISS-ABOVE starts up, it will settle down to displaying information screens about the International Space Station within a couple of minutes. The IP address will display in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen. Make a note of it. It's a string of numbers separated by periods (e.g. 198.168.1.15).

Your personal ISS-ABOVE website

Did you know that you get a personal website for your ISS-ABOVE. You can use it to:

  • see all upcoming passes of the ISS

  • check, set or change your location

  • switch on live streaming of video from the Space Station (it's OFF initially)

  • switch off the flashing LED display (it's ON initially)

  • set up Wifi

To access your ISS-ABOVE website, open a browser on your computer, tablet or phone and enter:

http://issabove.local/

If you don't see the ISS-ABOVE website (and this sometimes happens, so don't worry), enter the following in your browser:

http://nnn.nnn.n.nnn (or similar, where the numbers are the IP address you copied from your TV screen)

Refer to your Quickstart Guide for information on different settings that you can change. 
Refer to the Connect WiFi guide if you want to use WiFi instead of an Ethernet cable. IMPORTANT: You have to use an Ethernet cable first time you power up the ISS-ABOVE.

Don't just pull the power on your ISS-ABOVE

There is no On/OFF switch on the ISS-ABOVE. While you can just pull the power cable out, it's not recommended as it can corrupt the SD card that has the ISS-ABOVE program on it. In your Quickstart Guide it tells you how to power off gracefully using the ISS-ABOVE personal website.

Back up your ISS-ABOVE SD Card

Just in case anything ever goes wrong with your ISS-ABOVE, it's a good idea to clone or backup the SD card. You will need 8GB of space to do this and it takes about 10 minutes. For detailed instructions, click here. You can also read how to restore the program from backup to your SD card - for Windows click here, for Mac click here.

WiFi SETUP

Before setting up WiFi, you must have started your ISS-Above for the FIRST time using a wired Ethernet connection to your router. See the main Quickstart Guide for how to do that.  Note the IP Address is shown in the lower left of most every information screen displayed.

Access the wifi setup via the ISS-Above’s admin site at:
http://(ip address)/wifiscan

  1. Log in with the default username admin and password nasa
    A list of available WiFI networks will be displayed. (you may need to refresh this page to see all the wifi networks nearby)

  2. Click “connect” button next to the appropriate WiFi network

  3. Enter the passphrase / PSK as appropriate for your WiFi and Save that.

  4. Reboot the device from this page
    http://(ip address)/off

  5. Now remove the Ethernet Cable right away. Shortly after it restarts you should be connected to WiFi (note a different IP address will now be displayed).

  6. If your WiFi does not connect, you will see an error message:
    Undefined IP address. Have you connected to your LAN?

  7. If that happens re-connect the Ethernet cable and Go back to step 1 and make sure that in step 5 you have typed in the wifi password correctly

If you need more advanced control of wifi settings you can directly modify the internal configuration file via
http://(ip-address)/wifi

If your WiFi is open (i.e. no password needed) or hidden (set to not broadcast) or you are using enterprise WPA security you'll need some special configuration.  Email support@issabove.com for help