spel-uchile / PAYLOAD-ThrusterSoftware

SUCHAI Flight Software fork for use in Thuster Payload

Nanosatellite Flight Software

SUCHAI Flight software was originally developed to be used in the SUCHAI nanosatellite (1U Cubesat). SUCHAI was launch into orbit in June 2017 and has been working properly.

The main idea was to design a highly modular software architecture to help the development of CubeSats projects that are composed by large and heterogeneous teams and that are built incrementally.

The software architecture is based on the command processor design pattern. Developers can extend the functionalities adding new commands to the system (with low impact in the whole software) or adding new clients that can request any of the available commands depending on their custom control strategy. Commands and control modules can be added or removed with zero impact in the software main functionalities. Once a command is implemented, it can be used in the software itself and also as a ground station telecommand.

Visit http://spel.ing.uchile.cl to get latest news about SUCHAI project Visit http://www.freertos.org/ to get FreeRTOS source code and documentation More: http://tesis.uchile.cl/handle/2250/115307

Key features

• Designed for medium-range microcontrollers, such as Microchip PIC24 and ATMEL AV32.
• Highly extensible and modular command processor architecture
• Ported to FreeRTOS and Linux
• Flight inheritance: SUCHAI I (Jun 2017)

Build status

• Build and test status: https://jenkins.spel.cl/
• Build visual status: https://data.spel.cl/
• Last software architecture image generated:

Build notes

SUCHAI flight software was designed to run in multiple embedded architectures using FreeRTOS. It was also ported to Linux to facilitate the development and debugging. Currently, it has been tested in the following OS/Architectures :

• ArchLinux x86_64
• Manjaro x86_64
• Ubuntu 16.04 x86_64
• Debian Stretch RPi 3 (armv7l)
• FreeRTOS ESP32
• FreeRTOS AVR32 UC3 (avr32uc3)
• FreeRTOS Nanomind A3200 (avr32uc3)

Linux build

Requirements

Linux installation requires the following libraries:

• (build-essentials)
• cmake
• pthread
• sqlite3 (libsqlite3-dev)
• zmq (libzmq3-dev)
• unzip

Clone

Clone this repository

git clone https://github.com/spel-uchile/SUCHAI-Flight-Software
cd SUCHAI-Flight-Software

Go to the folder, locate config.h file to customize parameters and functionalities.

Build

Use the compile.py python script to easily install drivers, create the settings header configure.h and build:

python3 compile.py LINUX --drivers

This will download and build the libcsp too. Subsequents builds do not require the --drivers params. Use --help to learn how to customize the build:

python3 compile.py --help

Run

Go to the build folder ex: cd build_linux and execute

./SUCHAI-Flight-Software

Using ZMQ interface

In Linux, LibCSP uses the ZMQ interface to communicate different nodes. To pass messages between zmq_hub interfaces, we required a ZMQ Forwarder Device (Proxy) running in background. To start the ZMQ Forwarder server:

cd sandbox
python minzmqhub.py

It is possible to change the default ports (8001, 8002) and activate a monitor socket (8003) that will print all messages to stout using:

cd sandbox
python minzmqhub.py [-i IN_PORT] [-o OUT_PORT] [-m MON_PORT] [--mon]

Refs:

• libcsp/libcsp#64
• libcsp/libcsp#68
• http://learning-0mq-with-pyzmq.readthedocs.io/en/latest/pyzmq/devices/forwarder.html

Build for other architectures

Currently the fight software supports the following architectures (some platforms may have limited or under development support):

• Nanomind A3200: python3 compile.py FREERTOS --arch NANOMIND
• Atmel AV32UC3 Xplained board: python3 compile.py FREERTOS --arch AVR32 --sch_com 0
• Raspberry Pi: python3 compile.py LINUX
• Esspressif ESP32: python3 compile.py FREERTOS --arch ESP32 --sch_com 0

Please refer to the documentation for more details

Contact

Use the issue tracker to submit questions, requirements and bugs.

the SPEL team at Twitter to get latest news about the SUCHAI project