Creating flexible, resilient access to real-time sensor data can be challenging – especially when your device targets can literally disappear off the face of the Earth! See how groups of students and instructors are using the goMake API to talk with high-altitude balloon telemetry as it skirts the edge of the stratosphere, and the design considerations involved in making this a scalable platform for project-based STEM learning that aims to instill a sense of wonder.

1. GoMake

2. Jonathan Barton
@jellyfishtree
- Full Stack Javascript Engineer
- Co-Founder of goMake
@gomaketeam #GoMake <something epic>

3. AgendaAgenda
1.
Overview
2.
API
3.
Q & A

5. From bootstrapped launch to scal-
able education framework
Our Narrative

6. Neha
API Sorceress
Rick
Minister of Containers
Jonathan
Hardware Czar
Nick
Content/ Media Baron
Matt
Design Deacon
Jacob
App Apothecary
Morris
Infrastructure Warlock
Our Team

7. Container

9. goMake Mobile App

10. GoMake API Platform

11. Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzmeQJuCVUo

12. Students learn by understanding
the story behind their interactions
with science, math and technology
Framework for An
Emergent Narrative

13. Holyoke Codes
@holyokecodes

14. https://www.patreon.com/gomake
@gomaketeam

15. Neha Abrol
@abrol_neha
Senior Software Engineer
API Sorceress @GoMake

16. Agenda
1.
Overview
API
2.
Architecture
3.
Infrastructure
4.
Testing
5.
Deployment
&
Migrations
6.
Code Quality
7.
Challenges
8.
Data Security

17. Overview
• The goMake API provides flight related information and
real time telemetry for a goMake high altitude balloon
and other project launches.

18. Architecture
SendBird
Chat API
Auth0
Authentication
API
Middleware for
Express Validation
request headers etc.
Mongoose
ODM
Payload has a Hex String
Balloon
Latitude
Longitude
Altitude
Temperature
Modem
Imei#
Web Server
Express Server
Base don Node JS
Requestw
ith
Im
ei#
and
LaunchD
ate
Payload
w
ith
Im
ei#
&
Launchdate
Callback
U
RL
Callback URL sent
every 2 minutes
posting the flight’s
Telemetry
Request
Satellite Modem
RockBlock
DB
Mongo
DB
Response

19. Infrastructure - Overview
• Circle CI : Continuous Deployment Pipeline
• Kubernetes on Google Cloud : Microservices
Architecture

20. Infrastructure – Rolling Updates
• Push API code : Container registry will be updated
with the image with unstable tag.
• Add integration tests : Circle CI pushes the image to
GCR. The test script runs the test against API’s unstable
image that was created above.
• Promote API tag : If tests pass, run the promotion
script to promote API image tag from unstable to latest
. This ensures code with failing tests is not deployed.
• Deploy build : Run script to deploy the circleCi build
generated and tested above, using the circleCi build
number.

21. Infrastructure – API Continuous Deployment
Pipeline

22. Infrastructure – Integration Tests and API
Promotion

23. Infrastructure - Choice Considerations
● Flexibility :
○ Very fine control of compute usage over time.
○ Scale up and down based on requirements.
● Cost : Competitive rates for compute and storage.
● Availability : Relatively easy to deploy highly-available services.
● Simplicity : Straight-forward API with command line interface and
Web UI.
● Portability : Containers run the same in all environment; bring
dependencies with them.

24. Testing & Data Setup
Unit Tests
• mongoose-mock -
mocking mongoose
connection.
• sinon-mongoose –
chained mongoose model
methods.
• sinon-stub-promise –
promises.
Integration Tests
• http-status - http
responses from endpoints.
• supertest-as-promise -
mocking requests.
Data setup-Mock Data
• gomake-mock-data –
repository published as an
npm package to provide
mock data.
Data setup-Seeders
• gulp populate - “populate”
task to copy data from json
files to mongoDb
collection.
npm package gulp-mongo
populator used.

25. Deployment and migrations
Deployment
• Kubernetes
• gomake-deploy has all
the scripts that take care
of deployment needs.
• Slack integrations have
been created to provide
deployment updates and
run gomake-deploy jobs.
Migrations
• gomake-api-migrations
has the migrations
needed for the api with
both up/down migrations
• Docker image takes care
of executing the
migrations on the
kubernetes cluster.

26. Code Quality
• We use code beat to measure our code quality . Slack
integration has been added and whenever a new PR is
created it calls out the new GPA and modules that
negatively affect it.
https://codebeat.co

27. Challenges
• Challenge : No information from satellite during course of the flight.
• Solution : To give some kind of predictive navigation information based
on previous flights‘ data. (Future implementation).
• Challenge : Relationship between flight and telemetry, if same satellite
modem is used.
• Solution : Have flight launch date with IMEI number as a unique
identifier.
• Challenge : SSH’ ing into the container on an environment and editing
code and seeing changes in real time for debugging purposes
especially when deployment process was not as fast as we have it today.
• Solution : Docker commit containerId and Docker push image image:
tag came to the rescue after SSH’ing and making changes online .
Stopping the existing container created a new container with the
changes. No need to run a time consuming circleCi build to debug
issues.

28. Data Security
• JWT Token : transferring claims.
• Auth0 API : authentication and authorization. All user
related info is going to be stored in Auth0 database.
• SendBird Chat : Each user will get its own chat key
which will be requested by the app and will be
generated by the API

29. Thank You!
Special Thanks to Lorinda Brandon, Kim and Eric Norlin,
and the entire GoMake Family.

30. https://www.patreon.com/gomake