The design of the PSAS flight computer has a central process that is updated with current sensor and state data via sockets. In order to send some data to the flight computer without having to fly to Portland, visit the rocket lab, and run your copy of the code on the actual rocket, this python script will run a simulator and generate valid rocket data and send it to localhost on the correct ports.
It requires the psas_packet python library written by PSAS, which contains all the message structure definitions and helper functions for sending over the network.
JSBSim Flight Simulator
This script will assume you have JSBSim installed and in your path.
You can try the docs on the official website http://jsbsim.sourceforge.net/. Hopefully something like this should work:
$ wget -O jsbsim.tar.gz http://jsbsim.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/jsbsim/?view=tar
$ tar -xvf jsbsim.tar.gz
$ cd jsbsim/JSBSim/
$ ./autogen.sh
$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo make install
Try
$ JSBSim --version
To make sure it's working.
Python Dependencies With virtualenv
Best practice in python is to put each project you work on in a "virtual environment" so there are never any library version conflicts. Assuming you have the popular virtualenvwrapper package installed, create a new virtualenv, in the example below named rust-fc-test, but you can pick your own name.
$ mkvirtualenv rust-fc-test
Then install any dependencies:
$ pip install -r requirements.txt
When you're finished and want to do something else with your life, leave the virtualenv:
$ deactivate
And when you want to use it again
$ workon rust-fc-test
Python Dependencies Without virtualenv
Or you can install to your user account:
$ pip install --user -r requirements.txt
Failing that, install globally not recommended:
$ sudo pip install -r requirements.txt
Once you have all the dependencies installed then run the script:
$ ./run.py
It will print lots of initialization data to the screen. This will stream data, but the 'rocket' will be sitting still.
Some more info will print as the simulation runs.
To quit use ctrl-c.