Welcome to F Prime’s Reference Repo for the AMSAT® CubeSat Simulator

This Git Repo contains the F’ reference repository for the Command and Data Handling Raspberry PI Zero 2 Board for the AMSAT® CubeSat Simulator.

F’ Framework Overview

F´ (F Prime) is an open-source, component-driven software framework developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for rapid development and deployment of embedded systems and spaceflight applications. It is designed to simplify the creation of flight-quality software, particularly for small-scale missions like CubeSats, SmallSats, instruments, and deployables, but it can be used for any embedded system.

AMSAT® CubeSat Simulator Overview

The CubeSatSim(TM) is a low cost satellite emulator that runs on solar panels and batteries, transmits UHF radio telemetry, has a 3D printed frame, and can be extended by additional sensors and modules. This project is sponsored by the not-for-profit Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation, AMSAT®.

AMSAT® CubeSat Simulator Hardware Block Diagram

Raspberry PI ARM Cross-Compiler

Below is a link to the setup tutorial to install the Raspberry PI ARM Cross-Compiler: F´ Cross-Compilation Setup Tutorial

Install F’

Below are the steps to install the F’ Framework and clone the F’ AMSAT® CubeSat Repo:

1. Install the F’ system requirements.
2. Install fprime-bootstrap pip install fprime-bootstrap
3. Run fprime-bootstrap clone https://github.com/fprime-community/fprime-amsat-reference.git
4. cd fprime-amsat-reference
5. . fprime-venv/bin/activate
6. Follow these steps to install the Arduino CLI, which is needed for building the MainDeployment.

AMSAT® CubeSat Simulator Deployments

There are two F’ deployments for the AMSAT® CubeSat.

1. CDHDeployment - Executes on the Raspberry Pi Zero that manages command and telemetry of the AMSAT® CubeSat. This board also manages the PI Camera.
2. MainDeployment - Executes on the Raspberry Pi Pico mounted on the AMSAT® CubeSat Main Board.

This Git Repo contains the source code, CMAKE build files, configuration files, etc for the Raspberry Pi Zero CDHDeployment only. For the Raspberry Pi Pico MainDeployment please reference the following Git Repo [https://github.com/fprime-community/fprime-amsat-main-board-reference].

Building the AMSAT® CubeSat F’ Command and Data Handling Raspberry PI Zero 2 Executable

Building CDHDeployment

The CDHDeployment executes on the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 executing Linux OS. In order to properly build, the Raspberry PI ARM Cross-Compiler must be installed on the development computer:

1. cd CDHDeployment
2. fprime-util generate aarch64-linux -f (Note: -f will delete any existing previous aarch64-linux build)
3. fprime-util build aarch64-linux

Loading and running the AMSAT® CubeSat F’ Executables

TBD