SFUSatClub / houston

SFUSat's ground control system

SFUSat Houston

Named after the coloquial term for the Apollo missions' control centre, Houston is SFUSat's control centre.

It is a serial monitor, command schedule creator, command uploader, and telemetry verifier.

Installation Mac/Linux

1. run sudo pip3 install virtualenvwrapper
2. run nano ~/.bashrc
3. At the bottom of your .bashrc file, paste the following lines with ctrl + shift + v

export WORKON_HOME=$HOME/.virtualenvs

export PROJECT_HOME=$HOME/Devel

source /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh

4. exit nano with ctrl + x, y to save the file
5. cd houston
6. run which python and make sure it returns /usr/local/bin/python

• If not, run brew install python or equivalent install. (Ensure install of Python version 3 python -V)

7. mkvirtualenv --python=`which python3` sfusat-gcs (you can name it whatever you want)
8. You should now be in the virtualenv, indicated by (sfusat-gcs) before your command prompt
9. sudo pip install https://github.com/kivy/kivy/archive/master.zip
10. sudo pip install serial
11. pip3 install -r requirements.txt

Installation in Windows 10

Initial Setup (skip if pip and Python are already in your path)

1. Open the Command Prompt. Make sure that pip is installed (pip should automatically install with newer versions of python)

To check if pip is installed:

pip --version

This should give you a version and path, if it is installed. If it's not installed, follow the instructions at: https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/projects/using-pip-on-windows/4

Installing Houston

1. run pip install virtualenvwrapper
2. In your home directory, find .bash_profile (could also be .bashrc or .profile). Open it and paste the following lines:

export WORKON_HOME=$HOME/.virtualenvs

export PROJECT_HOME=$HOME/Devel

source [insert path to virtualenvwrapper.sh]

E.g. source /C/Users/USERNAME/AppData/Local/Programs/Python/Python37-32/Scripts/virtualenvwrapper.sh

Note: It should be possible to use $HOME/AppData/… to describe the path. However, Windows was, when this procedure was first made, unable to handle the whitespace in username by itself. It was also incapable of finding virtualenvwrapper.sh through which virtualenvwrapper.sh even when virtualenvwrapper.sh was in the path.

3. cd into Houston

4. Create virtual environment:

mkvirtualenv --python=which python orcasat-gcs (the name can be different)

If this fails: substitute which python for the full path of your Python.exe

5. Enter the virtual environment:

workon orcasat-gcs

6. Install kivy:

pip install cython pip install https://github.com/kivy/kivy/archive/master.zip

If this fails, go to the link, download the zip to your computer, and try:

pip install [pathToDirectoryWithTheZip]/kivy-master.zip

7. Further installs (if install in 6 fails, install these and try again):

pip install -r requirements.txt

If this fails:

pip install serial

pip install pygame

pip install kivy.deps.sdl2

pip install kivy.deps.glew

pip install kivy.deps.gstreamer

pip install kivy.deps.angle

pip install serial

8. Try opening the Houston app as indicated under user. If this fails, see if you have all the installs below with pip list (shows all your pip installs), and pip install [whatever is missing]

Potentially needed pip installs:

Most of these should automatically come with the steps above:

• certifi
• chardet
• Cython
• docutils
• future
• idna
• usi8601
• kivy
• Kivy-Garden
• kivy.deps.glew
• kivy.deps.gstreamer
• kivy.deps.sdl2
• pip
• pygame
• Pygments
• pypiwin32
• pywin32
• PyYAML
• requests
• serial
• setuptools
• urllib3
• wheel

Installation Notes:

• These steps haven't been thouroughly tested. You might need to jump through some hoops to install Kivy on your system.

Usage:

1. cd into the repo
2. workon sfusat-gcs to enter the virtualenv
3. python houston.py to start the app. Serial will automatically connect if the device path is right (see next section).

Usage notes:

• You will likely need to change the path to the OBC's FTDI usbserial convertor. This is serialPort at the top of houston.py. This should be COMx for Windows, /dev/usbserialx for Mac/Linux.