ISS Position Updates to Kafka Every Minute

This n8n workflow automates the retrieval and streaming of the International Space Station (ISS) position data. It uses a Cron node to trigger every minute, fetching current coordinates from the Where The ISS At API via an HTTP Request node. The response data is then cleaned and structured using a Set node, extracting key fields like name, latitude, longitude, and timestamp. Finally, the processed data is published to a specified Kafka topic ('iss-position') for real-time consumption.

The primary benefits include effortless real-time tracking of the ISS without manual intervention, enabling seamless integration into broader IoT dashboards, analytics pipelines, or notification systems. Kafka's durability ensures reliable data streaming even during network hiccups, making it ideal for mission-critical monitoring.

Use cases span educational projects (e.g., live ISS tracking apps), IoT device networks (e.g., feeding data to smart displays or AR visualizations), research (e.g., correlating satellite paths with ground sensors), and enterprise telemetry (e.g., demonstrating real-time data pipelines). It's lightweight yet powerful, saving hours of custom scripting and setup time while scaling effortlessly with n8n's no-code interface.