The Pocket Mission Control App
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Nicholas Phillips, James Savage & Ashley Whetter / JA & University of Bristol / The Pocket Mission Control App
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The Pocket Mission Control App
- 1. Pocket Mission Control Nicholas Phillips Ashley Whetter Will Colaluca Giannis Kaoullas Pakizat Masgutova Dominic Moylett Dr. Kirsten Cater James Savage Zahra Bozorgi James Daniell Francis Xavier Kwong Fraser McQueen-Govan Clau Octavian Soare Michael Johnson - JA
- 2. Brief • Mobile App for interacting with personal spacecraft • Background • Technical Challenges • Inspiring an open source, open access, personal space age.
- 3. CubeSat, Chipsat, Thin-Film • Low Cost • 4kg CubeSat carries many smaller craft • 10g ChipSats can have MEMS accelerometers and gyroscopes • <1g Thin-Film craft are a system on a chip
- 4. A Short History • JA Launching KickSat in September 2013 • 2nd Year Undergraduate Group Project Oct 2012 – May 2013
- 5. Why this app? • Interactivity and control to users • Smartphones are the current big thing • Greater exposure for CubeSat projects • Generate public enthusiasm for open source space • Easier for CubeSat projects to have an app • Answer many research based questions
- 6. System Architecture • Processing Data • Sanitizes Data • Harvesting Data • HTML Scraping • Data Formatting
- 9. System Architecture • Harvesting Data • HTML Scraping • Data Formatting • Processing Data • Sanitizes Data • Presenting Data (API) • RESTful Standards • Open to all • Scalable and Flexible
- 10. The Mobile App • - Android and iOS • 3D Spacecraft Models
- 13. The Mobile App • - Android and iOS • 3D Spacecraft Models • Time-lapse data graphing • Customisable and dynamic
- 14. What Makes This Special? • Useful for CubeSat projects • Awesome features like Augmented Reality • Open Source • Code Quality • Flexible • Open Source, Open Access Personal Space Age
- 15. Future Work • Open Source in June • It’s your project – take part! • volunteer@PocketMissionControl.org • iCubeSat.org CubeSat Workshop • 28th - 29th May 2013 • Thanks to Dr. Kirsten Cater
Editor's Notes
- Introduction (Ashley) ● Title slide. Who we are We are a group of 12 computer science students from the University of Bristol, who have been commissioned by JA to produce a mobile application that would inspire the next generation of space enthusiasts.
- ● Next slide. The brief - What the app will do To engage users in the app it will display live spacecraft data to users in new and refreshing ways such as 3D models and Augmented Reality. Our app is open source. This is not only a great way of getting developers involved, but it means we can give the app to users for free, and hopefully pave the way for an open source personal space age that’s available to everyone. Not only is it open source but it’s also cross platform. This means we can reach a wider audience. Currently we are developing the app for iOS and Android, with the ability to build for more platforms and devices later on in the projects development. Cross platform development introduces interesting challenges for developers, so we’ve kept the codebase the same between all platforms. Brief - The personal space age is upon us. Over the next few years, hundreds of small spacecraft will be launched to low earth orbit and beyond, owned and operated by private individuals with little or no expertise in spacecraft operations. JA, an open source space systems company, is developing the infrastructure to support such spacecraft with a focus on interplanetary citizen space exploration missions based on CubeSats (typically 1-6kg) and Thin-Film Spacecraft/Landers/Rovers (TF-SLR typically &lt;10g). See iCubeSat.org for presentations at a recent workshop describing this field. Some of these missions allow hundreds of private individuals to each adopt their own spacecraft in space, and work together to support science and exploration missions as a cooperative swarm of vehicles. To dramatically drive down the costs of such missions to the point where consumers can afford to take part, much of the technology required to support such missions (such as implementations of open industry protocols such as the CCSDS protocols and complex applications such as mission control systems) is being implemented for consumers and placed in the public domain. This project will develop an easy to use app that can download standards based spacecraft data and display it on iOS, Android and other devices to allow anyone to check the status of their spacecraft and perform simple management functions from their smartphone in an attractive and intuitive manner. Individuals will be able to browse the current status of the various subsystems of their spacecraft (for example, the status of solar panels or sensors), receive alerts if something unusual or requiring action occurs (for example a warning that solar flare from the sun will soon reach the spacecraft or that a suspected micrometeorite impact has occurred), or be informed about the contribution or context of their individual spacecraft within the overall mission. The project will involve working with the client to specify a core minimal set of functionality and an extensible framework for third party expansion, reviewing and ranking various middleware coding frameworks that might be applicable (for example Unity3D and PhoneGap), and implementing a first version of the application that will be placed in the public domain. Data will be received from spacecraft using amateur radio receivers and the NASA/ESA Deep Space Network and placed into suitable backend databases. A scalable web service, preferably based on open standards, will be designed and implemented as part of the project to act as an interface between the backend database populated by data downloaded from spacecraft and the app used by potentially millions of users on their smartphones. The app will be required to support a number of upcoming ESA, JA, NASA and UK Space Agency sponsored projects that are due to be launched in 2013/2014 and will involve delivering production quality code to strict deadlines. A graphic designer and an experienced project manager will be made available to support the project. All aspects of the development of the app will be open sourced by placing them in the public domain and the opportunity to co-author a paper or conference presentation at a conference such as SpaceOps may arise if the work is of high enough quality.
- ● Why our app? Smartphones are now everywhere. They’re the current “big thing” in consumer technology and an app is the best way to get users engaged in your idea. The back end services will be flexible enough to take data from any and all cubesat and chipsat projects. For project owners this means that it will be easier to get a project noticed by the general public. And for the app it mean there will be a wide range of interesting data available to display to users, so that no matter what part of space exploration people are interested in, there will be enough content in the app to get them Interested.
- Screenshots NOT demo ● Explain why we are using Unity for development (briefly) ○ We have chosen to use a development environment called Unity3D for the application. It allows us to maintain a single codebase which can be deployed to multiple platforms, keeping in line with our aim to reach out to a wide market. Unity also allows us to render 3D objects, making a more interactive and enjoyable way of exploring the spacecraft ● Progress through each screen on the app that is functional ○ Language screen ■ We will be supporting multiple languages including English, French and German ○ Main menu ■ We will have a skinnable UI, whereby the look and feel of the app may be different for each CubeSat project ○ My Spacecraft ■ Users of the app will be able to view and manage a list of spacecraft registered to their device ID ○ Spacecraft screens ■ A model of the spacecraft will be displayed ■ Instrument data from the spacecraft will be displayed, and a graph of instrument readings can be accessed ○ AR ■ We are in the process of implementing an augmented reality feature, whereby the idea is that you hold your device up to the sky, and representations of spacecraft that you are following will be visible on the mobile screen. We will be using the TLE data gathered on the Mission Data Warehouse to determine the positions of satellites relative to the user’s location. This is still a work in progress in terms of combining the TLE data with the app, and may be restricted to certain (newer) devices due to the requirement of a gyroscope. ○ Groundstations ■ The groundstations, which collect instrument data from satellites involved in specific projects, is visualised on a 3D representation of the Earth, and positioned according to their latitude and longitude. The globe can be rotated by sliding a finger across the screen. A pinchtozoom feature has been implemented, in order to obtain a clearer view of the groundstation locations. Links to the website of the groundstation is displayed when the user selects a groundstation point.
- Screenshots NOT demo ● Explain why we are using Unity for development (briefly) ○ We have chosen to use a development environment called Unity3D for the application. It allows us to maintain a single codebase which can be deployed to multiple platforms, keeping in line with our aim to reach out to a wide market. Unity also allows us to render 3D objects, making a more interactive and enjoyable way of exploring the spacecraft ● Progress through each screen on the app that is functional ○ Language screen ■ We will be supporting multiple languages including English, French and German ○ Main menu ■ We will have a skinnable UI, whereby the look and feel of the app may be different for each CubeSat project ○ My Spacecraft ■ Users of the app will be able to view and manage a list of spacecraft registered to their device ID ○ Spacecraft screens ■ A model of the spacecraft will be displayed ■ Instrument data from the spacecraft will be displayed, and a graph of instrument readings can be accessed ○ AR ■ We are in the process of implementing an augmented reality feature, whereby the idea is that you hold your device up to the sky, and representations of spacecraft that you are following will be visible on the mobile screen. We will be using the TLE data gathered on the Mission Data Warehouse to determine the positions of satellites relative to the user’s location. This is still a work in progress in terms of combining the TLE data with the app, and may be restricted to certain (newer) devices due to the requirement of a gyroscope. ○ Groundstations ■ The groundstations, which collect instrument data from satellites involved in specific projects, is visualised on a 3D representation of the Earth, and positioned according to their latitude and longitude. The globe can be rotated by sliding a finger across the screen. A pinchtozoom feature has been implemented, in order to obtain a clearer view of the groundstation locations. Links to the website of the groundstation is displayed when the user selects a groundstation point.
- Call for Support ● Hardware ○ More spacecraft to be launched, new projects ● Software ○ Continuation of development after it has been opensourced ■ Explain when it will be opensourced ■ Explain what features we plan to implement before it is opensourced ● How to get in touch/Contact information Questions/Finish