Auto Scheduler and software acess to routine observations

SatNOGS Software
1

Morning All

I have been running a station for a while and logging in to add observations usually 2 days at a time, the maximum advanced timing allowed. Is there a way to schedule all ISS passes over my station and some of the ham radio sats routinely and ongoing ? Any chance we can have this built into the software; sorry I don’t code :frowning:
I understand there is an option to load and auto scheduler, was just wondering if anyone else would find this feature useful in the GUI side of software?

Max

2

There’s the auto-scheduler, with the priorities file you can set it to either schedule only those specified or to have it fill up the rest of the time with random satellites.

3

Hello together,

I have installed the auto-scheduler for the satellite PEGASUS on my Station in Austria.

I documented the process, since I ran into some errors during installation. Maybe the file attached will help you for setting up the auto-scheduler. You only need to adapt it to the NORAD-ID and transmitter you want to observer of the ISS. :slight_smile:

Note: The paths in the document are for my local Setup on a RPi, they may differ for you. Moreover, I have generated the content of the priorities_XXXX.txt file using a gen-priorities.py script. The standard procedure, which is discribed in the auto-scheduler documentation didn’t work out for me. Also note, that the auto-scheduler is not part of any GUI, its a routine which runs at defined times using a cronjob. This routine schedules the specified passes for your Station in the SatNOGS Network.

Cheers,
Alex, oe3ala

Download:
3_Install satnogs-auto-scheduler for PEGASUS.pdf (118.5 KB)

1 Like
4

Hi SA2KNG, I had seen this and looked at it but decided it looked a bit involved, i only manage to get the satnogs up and running after a few tries. Will try and work through it
Cheers

Max

5

Hi Alex

I might be able to follow this as you sugest, many thanks.
I was asking about building it in to the gui to be able to avoid the under the bonnet work this needs, a nice tick box to say add all passes ongoing to my list would be great, or better specify until x date, or the next 50
I will give it a go and let you know
cheers
Max

1 Like
6

I think that feature has been discussed, perhaps in the future.
I’m running everything satnogs in docker and also the auto-scheduler, in that one I just use a sleep loop instead of crontab.
while true; do ./schedule_single_station.py -s xxxx; sleep 3600; done

7

Hi SA2KNG
am looking at Docker but this look a bit complicated also, are you running doocker on raspi ? or windows ?
cheers
Max

8

I wasn’t proposing docker as a solution, rather the method of execution I used in it (:
The venv install is the easiest path for auto-scheduler as it has pretty simple dependencies.

The method described in the repo works just fine, but this is what I used earlier (python3-venv required):

cd
git clone https://gitlab.com/librespacefoundation/satnogs/satnogs-auto-scheduler.git
cd satnogs-auto-scheduler
python3 -m venv venv
./venv/bin/pip3 install .

Run from crontab:
~/satnogs-auto-scheduler/venv/bin/schedule_single_station.py -s XXX

When done this way, the parser is already set for the script, so activating the venv before is not needed.

FYI I’m running docker on all my satnogs stations, a mix of pc, rpi and odroid, all on linux.

9

Indeed we plan to kind of integrate auto-scheduling in Network code. The plan is to have Network satellite list of priorities and station owners they can have their own that will overwrite all or part of the Network list.

In the first version of it, it will be very simple and the Network satellite list will be handled manually but in the next we plan to be populated in an automatic way with some criteria.

Unfortunately still we have to finish some maintenance work in both Network and DB, so I expect this new feature as well as others to come after the Summer.

1 Like
10

Thanks for the info , will see how i do
Cheers
Max

11

Thanks Fredy , looking forward to testing it on release
Cheers
Max

12

I documented the process, since I ran into some errors during installation.

@fh_wienerneustadt Excellent, thank you! I’m trying to get the auto-scheduler working and your document helps!

13

@fh_wienerneustadt - Excellent documentation and I now have that working as an alternative to the repo method. However, has anyone included Auto Scheduler in a Docker container, as I’m having trouble with that? Perhaps @SA2KNG would care to comment further on his July 16 message? Thanks.
Roger M0ROJ

14

yes, I have put this in the larger compose example that contains some optional features:

You can add AUTO_SCHEDULER_EXTRA to station.env with additional parameters for the scheduler, I have:
AUTO_SCHEDULER_EXTRA=-P prio.txt -d 1.2 -i 30 -m 0 -r 30
the prio file needs to sit the home directory (volume) inside the conainer, also just a warning if it’s missing.

A easy way of creating prio.txt is like this:
cd ← only needed if it starts somewhere odd and not in it’s home.
docker compose exec satnogs_client bash ← enter the container.
cat > prio.txt ← and enter, then paste the content, then Ctrl-D.

$ ls -l prio.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 satnogs-client satnogs-client 2081 Aug 17 12:06 prio.txt