In 2018 Libre Space Foundation (LSF) plans to apply to participate in 2018 Google Summer of Code (GSoC). Participating organizations are to be announced at February 12.
With the help of @comzeradd I created a wiki page, with some guidelines and info.
At the bottom of the page we have some sample project ideas, if you are comfortable with their code-base and want to mentor these don’t hesitate to leave a reply.
If you have an awesome new idea/feature you’d like to add feel free to add it too (it doesn’t have to be SatNOGS specific since we plan on participating as Libre Space) by leaving a reply here so the community can discuss it. So it’s time to think about all those features we want to develop but never had the time to do so.
I’ve had a think whilst cleaning the mud and salt off my bike. There is something that I think is not quite working for me and that is the local ‘dashboard’. By this I mean the local client status dashboard. Sure it tells me which observations are planned and simple information about what is going on when there is an observation going on but it could do more for me. So, for me here is a stab at defining the problem and a potential solution.
The problem: Local dashboard (insert correct name) does not provide the ground station owner with a rounded status of the ground station. It is missing performance data such as utilisation, number of passed or failed observations etc. System also requires you to have local access and to check through a laptop ( I can see it on my phone but the experience is limited.
Suggested solution: Build on the existing dashboard to allow a standard set of data to be collected (as is perhaps) and then provide the opportunity to add in elements that suit the user.
For example -
Determine the % utilisation of the station and then provide an opt in to fill in the gaps with passes (A sort of ‘schedule till it drops’ feature).
Message me when I’m offline
Indication of system health (all observations made have successfully been uploaded to SatNOGS or not as the case may be). Determine patterns possibly.
Allow for this to be on some low power local device, such as E-Ink RPi zero W for example or mobile app.
Map the available satellites (VHF at the moment for me, for example) and where they are, highlighting passes etc
You’ll note that I’m not volunteering to mentor (If you’re asking me to help code then there’s a problem ;-)). I am happy to help use my skills as a mechanical development engineer for remote systems /project manager but I think that won’t be useful. But, happy to have a go, in fact I’d like to be a part of it somehow just to see how all this is done.
@elkos: I’m not the most familiar with the codebase, but I’d be happy to if it would be of any help. My skills are Linux system administration/ops, plus a healthy dose of software development (Go, some Python, some web development, a very little bit of Django). I’ve helped mentor people in my career both formally and informally: sysadmins, developers, and (while working at a university) researchers/scientists/undergrads with varying levels of experience w/Linux, programming and general development practices. Notable deficiencies: Django, web front end (DOM and JavaScript are pretty new to me). Oh, and I’m on the west coast of North America, so hours may be a problem. Maybe between @g7kse and me, we could make it work? (Not to volunteer you for work @g7kse, but you did say you’d be interested in participating. )
I am not very familiar with the whole software stack, but I am now participating in GSOC through Open Astronomy (https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/organizations/5078690623389696/) so feel free to check out the project ideas in case you find anything interesting and of course I would love to help Libre Space Fnd to participate next year in any way I can.
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