SOFTWARE

The Software Department is in charge of the On-Board and Ground Station computers software for the rocket launch; as well as software-related activities within the team, such as, providing GUIs (Graphical User Interfaces) for the in-house tools or the management of the server and licenses used by other departments.

About the team

The software team is in charge of the design of the OBC software which include the deployment of the parachutes, the gathering of the data measured by the sensors, and the communication with ground, among others, along with formalizing a strong method to model, design, implement and integrate software for real-time and critical systems. They are also in charge of designing and implementing telecommunications subsystems based on software, to perform the communication between the rocket and ground during the flight.

We know that the developments of the department are critical for the success of the flight of our vehicle, this has strong implications in all the work we perform, and so, it pushes us to lavish attention on all the outputs of the team.

                    Ongoing Projects

Astrea-C 
This project requires programming four different microcontrollers along with the telemetry graphical interface. This requires a multi-disciplinary approach and the integration of very different subsystems. The onboard software, which is the most complex one, must perform many tasks with a high frequency. In order to tackle this challenge, the software is designed as
a multi-thread and multi-frequency system using the ChibiOS RTOS (Real-Time Operating System). It handles more than 200 bytes of sensor measurements from more than 5 sensors at above 200Hz of frequency, which must be logged in memory, sent through telemetry and processed by an event detection algorithm in order to actuate the parachutes at the precise moment.
Server management
STAR's developments require a shared infrastructure. Our server, provided by
Stackscale, allows us to run a plethora of simulations, share content and host other services efficiently. The software department is tasked with the maintenance of the server and its user accounts, as well as ensuring its security and performance. In
addition, the department often develops commands and tools for the integration of simulation software.
SES-FES
The purpose of this project is to provide the team with a very practical toolbox in order to set-up and analyse software prototypes in MATLAB-Simulink. The SES
(STAR Environment for Simulation) is a MATLAB based toolbox which enables a
simplified interface for setting and interacting with Simulink models. This
standardizes the development of any FES (Functional Engineering Simulation),
which purpose may go from prototyping and analysing a given software architecture, to developing and testing an algorithm of interest. This also allows very rapid and efficient trade-offs and tunning of architectures and algorithms without the need to test in hardware in early stages of development.

PHONE

+34 620 222 539

E-MAIL

contact.star@uc3m.es

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