Mission, Systems, and Test: Experiments
By Jeremy Seiden (Mission, Systems, and Test)
I describe experiments we conducted to verify that the communication system was working properly. Specifically, we tested for and verified that our data was being properly packetized.
Table of Contents
Introduction
During the development of the 2016 SPARCCS instrument, experiments were conducted to make sure the system would function as intended. For the ground research station, software development was the primary concern. In particular, the reception and processing of packetized data.
Background Information
In system communication, primarily in systems that require a wireless link, data is sent in a packetized format. These packets contain information to identify the contents of the data packet. As the 2016 SPARCCS instrument does not utilize the Arxterra control panel, software had to be created to ensure the data is communicated via a packetized structure.
Experiment
As the data needs to be sent and received in a packetized form, steps needed to be taken to verify the data was being transmitted in the correct packet format. As suggested by the mission, systems, and test division manager Alia Bonetti, the terminal monitoring program CoolTerm was used to observe the serial data being sent from the instrument. CoolTerm allows the user to see the serial data in hexadecimal format a single byte at a time. This made it easy to observe the data packet contents to verify the correct data was being sent.
Visualizing Packetization with CoolTerm
Conclusion
This experiment proved to be very valuable in trouble shooting problems with the instrument software as well as the ground research station software. Being able to visualize the data aided in the setup of the instrument software to configure the parameters of the packet, as well as configuring settings on the ground research station (Matlab). For Matlab to read serial data, parameters must be set within the code so the when the serial read command is executed, the correct format can be retrieved. Viewing the data in CoolTerm made the configuration of these parameters much easier.