[Ground-station] Link budget

Bruce Perens bruce at perens.com
Thu Jan 21 11:09:10 PST 2021 

Crystal has some "shards" (user-contributed packages) that would interest
us, which I have listed below.

My own preference is to do all UI via web applications, since I have had
such a great experience making UIs and two-way voice applications work on
browsers. In general iOS trails the APIs implemented on everything else,
with that exception you get great portability across operating systems
without having to use somebody's portability layer like wxWidgets and build
binaries on every platform. My apps generally live on devices or servers
and talk to everything.

Although I write significant amounts of Javascript, I try to keep as much
work as possible on the server, since Javascript is sort of wild-west.
Documentation of packages and utilities - even ones that everybody uses -
is poor to nonexistent. Packages don't in general document whether they
work in the browser or just in Node.

For plotting, I like best to draw on the web canvas. The API includes the
good stuff we learned from the Postscript Red Book, a 2D paradigm with easy
matrix transforms (and I don't do DSP, so this is all I ever have to do
with matrix math). The PDF of the Red Book and its successors is on the web
for free these days, and is still the best place to learn the paradigm.


   - alea <https://github.com/nin93/alea> - Repeatable sampling, CDF and
   other utilities to work with probability distributions
   - ishi <https://github.com/toddsundsted/ishi> - Graph plotting package
   with a small API and sensible defaults powered by gnuplot
   - linalg <https://github.com/konovod/linalg> - Linear algebra library
   inspired by MATLAB and SciPy.linalg
   - num.cr <https://github.com/crystal-data/num.cr> - Numerical computing
   library supporting N-Dimensional data
   - predict.cr <https://github.com/RX14/predict.cr> - Satellite prediction
   library using the sgp4 model
   - quartz <https://github.com/RomainFranceschini/quartz> - Modeling and
   simulation framework


On Thu, Jan 21, 2021 at 10:47 AM Juno Woods <juno at openlunar.org> wrote:

> Ruby syntax is so nice. The challenge with using it for
> science/engineering has always been the lack of a killer plotting app. I'd
> love to see Crystal change that, but I worked on this for years with Ruby
> (see: SciRuby) without much success. It would really require a large
> organization to throw its weight behind developing such a tool, IMHO.
>
> This same thing is an issue for other languages people have suggested as
> well. It's difficult to duplicate the plotting functionalities of Python
> and Matlab/Octave.
>
> I'm +1 for Python over Octave. Choice of language helps determine the
> engineering culture we draw from as well, and Python ties us a bit more to
> the larger software engineering community.
>
> Juno
>
> On Wed, Jan 20, 2021 at 12:53 PM Bruce Perens via Ground-Station
> <ground-station at lists.openresearch.institute> wrote:
>
>> While you are looking at advanced languages, here is a piece I wrote on
>> Crystal a while back. It's the logical successor to Ruby, which IMO was
>> advanced beyond Python. But there is a cost to being on the bleeding edge.
>>
>> https://perens.com/2020/06/28/building-a-startup-with-crystal-and-lucky/
>>
>> On Wed, Jan 20, 2021 at 12:39 PM Thomas Savarino via Ground-Station
>> <ground-station at lists.openresearch.institute> wrote:
>>
>>> I’d like to hear more about your Golang work and why you use that.
>>> S
>>>
>>> Sent from my iPhone
>>>
>>> On Jan 20, 2021, at 12:32 PM, Robert McGwier via Ground-Station
>>> <ground-station at lists.openresearch.institute> wrote:
>>>
>>> 
>>> I want to strongly support python for the work. I do simulations in
>>> Matlab and some architecture design work and then I use python and I'm
>>> moving into Golang for compiled code.
>>>
>>> Bob
>>>
>>>
>>> Dr. Robert W McGwier, Ph.D.
>>> Adjunct Faculty, Virginia Tech
>>> ARDC Member of Board
>>> ARS: N4HY
>>> ARRL, AMSAT, AAVSO, TAPR, SkyHub
>>>
>>> On Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 4:07 PM Michelle Thompson via Ground-Station
>>> <ground-station at lists.openresearch.institute> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Thank you Thomas and Alan for the valuable input.
>>>>
>>>> I have a soft spot in my heart for Octave and MATLAB, and am used to
>>>> having them be a significant part of technical work like this. If Python
>>>> can do the job, and it's the preferred expression for the work, then by all
>>>> means let's proceed.
>>>>
>>>> -Michelle W5NYV
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, Jan 19, 2021 at 2:03 PM Alan Rich <arich127 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Hi All ,
>>>>> My apologies for being really late / absent to respond to lots of the
>>>>> emails on this subject.
>>>>>
>>>>> I think I was the one that unfortunately dragged Octave into the
>>>>> discussion. The main reason was that I am not an experienced python person
>>>>> (yet) but I have contributed in the past  to some Matlab utilities for RF
>>>>> work that were converted to executables in the end. Matlab isn't open
>>>>> source, but Octave is, and it was one of the original open engineering
>>>>> tools. It's been around for 20 plus years and has good community support. I
>>>>> was thinking that a link budget and propagation "Toolbox" for Octave might
>>>>> be a nice thing to have for the community.
>>>>>
>>>>> Given that python, numpy, scipy.. have really become the open source
>>>>> baseline, I'm sure that this is absolutely the right way to go for a
>>>>> mission application/planning tool.  I apologize for the distraction.
>>>>> I'll experiment  a bit over in Matlab/Octave in the background to see
>>>>> if a set of .m files or functions can be built up to support future work.
>>>>>
>>>>> Link budgets , Bus power budgets (and antenna pointing requirements)
>>>>> are so important. Everything else ( throughput and BER/SER/PER) falls out
>>>>> of them.
>>>>>
>>>>> Cheers!
>>>>> Alan
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> <http://www.avg.com/email-signature?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=webmail> Virus-free.
>>>>> www.avg.com
>>>>> <http://www.avg.com/email-signature?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=webmail>
>>>>> <#m_-2462185537550317974_m_5021025678534474979_m_-7217812766232080695_m_6488736157870010448_m_9189044632356751745_m_3502320734441759451_DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Tue, Jan 19, 2021 at 3:56 PM Thomas Savarino <
>>>>> thomas.savarino at mac.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> I understand that you don’t want any help with this, but I can’t
>>>>>> resist mentioning that you’d probably be better off doing everything in
>>>>>> python and avoiding the dependence on Octave, so you should really consider
>>>>>> what you need by way of calculation. Numpy probably has most if not all of
>>>>>> the functions you’ll need.
>>>>>> Best of luck
>>>>>> S
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Sent from my iPad
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Jan 19, 2021, at 11:13 AM, Michelle Thompson via Ground-Station
>>>>>> <ground-station at lists.openresearch.institute> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Thank you very much Salvatore,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> There is no Octave code base that I know of, but this is a very good
>>>>>> direction.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> -Michelle W5NYV
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Sun, Jan 17, 2021 at 8:31 AM Salvatore Lionetti via Ground-Station
>>>>>> <ground-station at lists.openresearch.institute> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Hi guys,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I'm sorry but I've started yesterday to work on this topic.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I've made the spreadsheet available on my personal Nextcloud web
>>>>>>> instance:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> https://cumlaborare.strangled.net/s/Ng5H3RmmZP8HzNE
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> By this way:
>>>>>>> * multiple people can collaborate on the same document, at the same
>>>>>>> moment.
>>>>>>> * comments are allowed,
>>>>>>> * versioning is in force.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I've setup no password for now, but content can be recovered from a
>>>>>>> previous version very easily. (similar to Wikipedia)
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> In the meanwhile I've verified that Jupyter can also use Octave
>>>>>>> interpreter, giving us the possibility to have a single code base.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Is there a (also partial) Octave code base to reuse?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Have a good day
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> <http://www.avg.com/email-signature?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=webmail> Virus-free.
>>>>> www.avg.com
>>>>> <http://www.avg.com/email-signature?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=webmail>
>>>>> <#m_-2462185537550317974_m_5021025678534474979_m_-7217812766232080695_m_6488736157870010448_m_9189044632356751745_DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>
>> --
>> Bruce Perens - CEO at stealth startup. I'll tell you what it is
>> eventually :-)
>>
>

-- 
Bruce Perens - CEO at stealth startup. I'll tell you what it is eventually
:-)
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