2023-05-18 IMACs Revamp Meeting

purpose is to discuss how we want to do ground station v2
- requirements
- language/framework
Requirements
- modularize datatelem and gui so its easier to debug
  - testable units: data-telem, GUI, and ZP Telemetry Manager
- Mavlink/drop in replacement for COTS
  - QGroundControl
  - Mission Planner
  - MAVLink Developer Guide | MAVLink Guide
- Easy to distribute/set up
  - Single line/click install
  - Should just work!
- Runs on Windows or Linux
- display map with GPS markers
- Well documented
- Can run without internet connection
- Connect to COM port
- Connect to network address
Nice To have
- Runs on MacOS
- on the fly UI changes
  - moving components around and stuff
  - draggable widgets
- ability to choose which USB/COM port has the telem link

Model

Client-Server Interrupt
- Server:
  - Deserializes input data from USB COM or network address
  - Converts data into to format client will understand (application layer)
  - Wrap data and send packet on exit port (rest of OSI layers)
- Client:
  - Connects to localhost server port and unwraps data from packet
  - GUI update on callback from received data?
Client-Server Poll
- Server:
  - Same as above but server will wait for client to ask for data
- Client:
  - Same as above but will periodically ask the client for data
Monolith
- Does everything from start to end
- Multithreading/multiprocessing

Client Framework ideas

Wails
- GitHub - wailsapp/wails: Create beautiful applications using Go
- Monolith, will not use
Flutter
- Flutter on Desktop
- Good community and support
- Strongly typed
- Single language
  - No CSS, HTML, JavaScript combo
- Good centralized documentation
- Built in linter and formatter
  - Dart fmr?
- Multiplatform development
- Supports cross-compilation
- Has debugger
Javascript frameworks
- Easy to write in
- Lots of documentation
- Around for a long time
- Huge community and support
- Spaghetti code
- Lots of linters to choose from
- Industry prevalent: Résumé and co-op
Kotlin?
- In beta?

Server languages:

Go
- Good community and support
- Statically typed
- Good centralized documentation
- Built in linter
- Multiplatform development
- Support cross-compilation
- Has debugger
Java
- JVM required
Rust
- Meh community and support
- Statically typed
  - Guaranteed correctness
- Meh documentation (have to find a library)
- Linter???
- Multiplatform development
- Compilation???
- Has debugger
Python
- Dynamically typed
- Everyone hates this
- Context: We did this for the 2022-2023 competition and ran into many issues. Deduced that this is not the right tool to use and debugging is a huge pain.
C++
- NO
- We would run into a lot of issues bc there is not a lot of support to do the functions required by the server

Implementation

server
- get bytes from USB or network
- use MAVLink library to convert bytes to structs
- extract useful data into a JSON
- send JSON through socket
client
- an event comes in
- you process the data in a callback
- update the gui
  - update the sensor data/map
  - send a notification widget to the user (if its like one off)
Logging
- SQL database
- Text file (this is very much the way to go)
Testing
- Python
  - update existing testing scripts to use MAVLink instead of LCM
- mission planner simulation https://ardupilot.org/planner/docs/mission-planner-simulation.html
- unit testing
  - gotest
  - https://docs.flutter.dev/cookbook/testing/unit/introduction
- for web, https://blog.postman.com/postman-supports-websocket-apis/
  - send test data as JSON through the websocket and view the GUI update

Action items

Get information on how LTE telemetry works (Internet? Network interface? USB?)
Find out whether client and server can be packaged together in CI
- That isn’t just building them separately and then putting them in a zip with a script that runs the server and then the client (which is fine)
Single repository or separate repositories?
Is the client-server model necessary?