I had an hour or so this morning before work, so I decided to try coding up a simple method to allow the user to choose which object they'd like to locate.  The planet finder has no monitor or keyboard, so previously I had hard coded the target just for testing, but now it was time to add some interactivity.  

I toyed with the idea of making a simple web UI that you could use from your smartphone or tablet, but rejected that (for now).  Yes, it'd allow you a lot of flexibility in selecting objects or even inputting your own orbital data, but when you involve the phone for a UI, you might as well use your phone's sensors for all the rest too, and skip the Pi altogether.  No, I wanted something that could be done entirely on the device, from start to finish. 

I ended up with simple Python routine that takes a list of possible objects and lets the user use the joystick UP/DOWN to cycle through them until the user clicks the button on one of them.  

It's not perfect, but so far it's workable.  I have some ideas about how to make it a bit nicer, but really the 8x8 LED matrix is a little limiting.  But it's better than pairing it with a phone!