Re: [amsat-bb] Telemetry

["Stacey E. Mills, M.D." <w4sm@xxxxxxxxxx>]

At 01:38 PM 9/7/2000 +0200, Jean-Louis.RAULT@tcc.thomson-csf.com wrote:

>Just a question after reading in the last AMSAT Journal the exciting article
>of Peter DB2OS about the first paces of P3D in space.
>Will any telemetry decoding information or telemetry software been made
>available to the ham community before launch ?

I have a relatively complex Windows (95/98/NT/2000) telemetry software 
program for P3D.  The program will decode the telemetry and has windows to 
display overall status, temperature, power, navigation, the transponder 
matrix grid etc.  Telemetry can be logged, and logged files can be 
replayed.  Selected telemetry channels can have their values graphed from a 
replay file, a series of up to 10 channels can be exported from a stored 
telemetry file for manipulation by Excel or other spread sheet 
software.  The program is currently fully functional and a command version 
of it has been used by the P3D team for several years.  I'll be in Kourou 
for two weeks starting 9/13 and during that time, I'll verify all of the 
data translation equations and make any last minute changes that are 
necessary to the software.  The general release telemetry version should be 
ready shortly after that.  The last thing to do is to finalize a Help file 
to prevent me from getting too many setup questions.  I plan on releasing 
this through AMSAT-NA and having them charge a small fee to support the 
organization and P3D.  The software currently requires a callsign and 
matching registration number to function.

As currently structured, the software accepts live data from an RS232 
serial port at 1200 baud.  The G3RUH 400 bps PSK demodulator is fully 
compatible, and there are software demodulators for the DSP-93, DSP-12, and 
DSP-2232 that work fine as well, although the DSP-2232 400 bps demodulator 
that I have only reads 512 byte per block and omits the terminal CRCC bytes 
so error checking can't be done.  A 514 byte version IS available for the 
DSP-12 and DSP-93.

Finally, the software includes TCP/IP client and server capability.  In 
server mode, you can output live telemetry from your internet site to any 
connecting clients and in client mode, you can log into any server site 
(with a known address) and download real-time telemetry.....

BTW, the program is written in C++ using Borland C++ Builder.  If you are 
interested in programming and like the RAD capabilities of Visual Basic, 
try C++ Builder, it blows the socks off Vis. Basic in virtually any 
category you can imagine (I don't own stock in Inprise :-) ).  Borland is 
developing a Linux version of C++ Builder scheduled for release in a year 
or so. Therefore, it should be easy to port this program over to the Linux 
platform at that time.   I doubt if that will happen with Visual Basic, 
given its developer :-).  If you're a Mac user, I don't know what's 
currently available, but the telemetry channel designations and translation 
equations will be made available very shortly, so anyone with proper 
development software can "roll their own" program.

As Peter mentioned in his article, the current plan calls for P3D to have 
periods of active transponder time the first year of its life while it's 
orbit is gradually adjusted and it's in spin mode.  However, even when the 
transponders are off you always can watch the telemetry as one or more 
beacons should always be functional ....

These will be exciting times.


--
  ________________________________________________________________________
  Stacey E. Mills, W4SM    WWW:    http://www.cstone.net/~w4sm/ham1.html
    Charlottesville, VA     PGP key: http://www.cstone.net/~w4sm/key
  ________________________________________________________________________

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