Flight Software for the Argus Board

The repository contains the current flight software for the Mainboard of Argus. Argus is a technology demonstration mission with the goal of demonstrating vision-based Orbit Determination on a low-cost satellite (devoid of any GPS or ground involvement). We also aim to collect a decent dataset of images of the Earth to further efforts in CubeSat visual applications and demonstrate efficient on-orbit ML/GPU processing.

Architecture

See High-Level Architecture

Hardware

The flight software currently supports:

• Argus v1 (ATSAMD51J20)
• Argus v1.1
• Argus v2 (RP2040, in testing)

Installation

git submodule init
git submodule update
pip install .
cd simulation/
pip install .
cd ..

Build and Execution

With mainboard

Building current files and moving them to the board can be handled by the run.sh script which can be run via:

./run.sh

The script first builds and compiles the flight software files to .mpy files and transfers them to the mainboard you are connected to. The compilation is supported on Linux, MacOS, Windows, and RPi.

Without mainboard

In the absence of the mainboard, you should either run the simulator or emulator.

To run the emulator:

./run.sh emulate

To install the simulator, follow the main README here. The software-in-the-loop is currently transitioning to a newly developed C++ simulator.

To run the simulator:

./run.sh simulate

Build or move

For only building files or moving them to the board as individual actions, you can use the automated scripts, build.py and move_to_board.py, in the build_tools directory. Note that move_to_board.py automatically updates all changes (including adding and deleting files) on the target board.

To build:

python3 build_tools/build.py

or for emulation

python3 build_tools/build-emulator.py

To move to board:

python move_to_board.py -s <source_folder_path> -d <destination_folder_path>

Troubleshooting

If the board ever gets stuck in read-only mode, access the REPL and type

>>> import storage
>>> storage.erase_filesystem()

This will erase and reformat the filesystem.