Constellation Operator Guide

Welcome to the Constellation Operator Guide. This guide is intended to provide a comprehensive overview of the framework for people who will set up and operate Constellations, control satellites and monitor the performance of the system.

See also

Separate guides are provided for those who intend to integrate their own hardware or develop new satellites as well as for those who wish to contribute to the development of Constellation and require more in-depth technical information.

This guide is structured in four different parts, each of which serve a different purpose:

• The installation and initial setup of Constellation is described in the Getting Started section.

• Tutorials teach how to use Constellation using practical examples, starting from simple situations such as starting and controlling a single satellite, and gradually moving to more complex examples & setups.

• The Concepts section provides detailed explanation of the workings of the framework and the thoughts behind its structure. This is not the technical documentation of the Constellation core components, it describes their functionality and helps in developing an understanding of the system.

• Finally, the How-To Guides provide concise answers on how to achieve a specific goal, such as the implementation of a new satellite, or the extension of a satellite with custom commands.

Throughout this guide, buttons of graphical user interfaces will be displayed as Buttons, configuration parameters and commands typeset as inline code such as parameter_name, and states of satellites or the entire Constellation will be denominated e.g. by ORBIT. Sequences of keystrokes are rendered as individual keys such as Control-c.

Warning

This software framework is still under construction and no stable version has been released yet. Features, protocols and the behavior of individual components may still change.

Get started

• Installing from Source
• Installing from PyPI

Tutorials

• Starting & Controlling a Satellite
  • Starting a Satellite
  • Controlling the Satellite
    • Starting a Controller
    • Sending Commands to the Satellite
    • Loading a Configuration File
    • Closing the Controller
• Controlling with MissionControl
  • Starting MissionControl
  • Initializing the Constellation
  • Taking Data
  • Controlling Individual Satellites
  • Deducing the Configuration of the Constellation

Concepts

• The Constellation
  • General Considerations
    • Naming Things
    • Limitations & Threat Model Considerations
  • Component Types
    • The Satellite
    • The Controller
    • The Listener
• The Satellite
  • Type and Name
  • State and Status
  • Controlling the Satellite
  • The Finite State Machine
    • Normal Operation - Steady States
    • Operating the Instrument - The RUN State
    • Changing States - Transitions
    • Failure Modes & Safe State
• The Controller
• Autonomous Operation
• Logging & Verbosity Levels
  • Verbosity Levels
• Telemetry
  • Metric Types
• Data Processing
  • Transmitters & Receivers
  • Structure
  • Messages
    • Data Messages
    • Begin-of-Run & End-of-Run Messages

How-To Guides

• Setting up InfluxDB and Grafana
  • Setting up Docker Compose
  • Setting up InfluxDB
  • Setting up Grafana
  • Adding a Dashboard
    • Generating Monitoring Data
    • Creating a Query
    • Adding a Visualization