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Princeton Satellite
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VisualCommander is a revolutionary new application for Mac OS X Leopard for data acquisition, hardware control, simulation and visualization. It provides a flexible, open environment that allows you to integrate all of your software tools and heritage code into a consistent easy-to-use environment. |
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VisualCommander is an extensible client-server application for data visualization, command, and control. Designed to seamlessly integrate multiple distinct operations (including missions, experiments, simulations, and others), VisualCommander provides reliable data storage, access control, command processing, and an extensive suite of built in visualization and analysis tools.
VisualCommander receives data from and sends commands to external entities via a lightweight plugin interface. This approach enables virtually any system to be connected to VisualCommander with minimal programming effort. Examples of such systems include simulations, hardware experiments, space operations (telemetry), medical instruments, web sources, and more. Furthermore, VisualCommander can manage multiple active connections involving distinct, unrelated systems. The data and command capabilities of each active plugin are combined within a unified “Data Hierarchy”. VisualCommander clients can, in turn, access this data hierarchy as a collective whole or by individual system.
The VisualCommander client application enables users to construct custom graphical user interfaces (GUIs) using a library of built in displays ranging from simple numeric to plots to three dimensional OpenGL visualization tools. Interfaces consist of one or more windows containing multiple, layered display “pages”. Extensive configuration functionality allow users to easily create a custom “look and feel” for each interface. Multiple screen configurations are easily leveraged via multiple display windows.
In addition to visualization and command, clients have powerful tools for dynamic data analysis known as “Data Processors”. Data processors generate new data in the data hierarchy by operating on existing data points. VisualCommander includes a built-in data processor capable of interpreting a significant subset of the MATLAB language.
VisualCommander is designed, first and foremost, to be an extensible package. The client can be extended by creating new data display tools and data processors. Both of these component types are loaded by the client as plugins, and the application programming interfaces (APIs) for developing them have been designed to simplify use by customers and third-party vendors. In particular, existing OpenGL visualization tools can be encapsulated in VisualCommander display plugins with minimal effort.
External simulations can be connected to VisualCommander via the previously described plugin interface. In addition, VisualCommander includes a built-in simulation engine, DSim, in which simulations are constructed by connecting pre-defined models of various components, such as sensors, actuators, batteries, power networks, etc.
VisualCommander has a built-in MATLAB like scripting language which can perform computations on any incoming data and output new data points. Scripts can be created at any time to handle rapidly changing situations.