Software-in-the-loop

Documentation for the OpenRocket Software-in-the-loop extension

Overview

The OpenRocket extension is meant to provide the simulation environment for your flight software. While OpenRocket provides several useful events and values, this extension makes use of the following simple outputs:

• acceleration

(near-future)

• velocity

• world coordinates

• rotational coordinates

These values are provided over a serial port (virtual ports included). Commands can be sent back to the simulation to carry out events (chute deployment, airbrake deployment, fin movement). As a result, your flight software controls the actuation of the rocket in the OpenRocket simulation, leading to software-in-the-loop testing.

Usage

Coming soon!

Development

Working with socat

1. Install

sudo apt install socat

1. Start virtual ports

sudo socat PTY,link=/dev/ttyUSB98 PTY,link=/dev/ttyUSB99

1. Elevate user privilege to operate ports

sudo chmod a+rw /dev/ttyUSB98 && sudo chmod a+rw /dev/ttyUSB99

Compilation and Usage

1. Change directory to orksim

cd ork-extension

1. Compile program

ant

1. Copy the .jar file to OpenRocket plug-in

cp ./haloship.jar ~/.openrocket/Plugins/haloship.jar