CPOSC 2018

Random notes while attending the Central Pennsylvania Open Source Conference on December 1, 2018

January 19, 2019

The end of last year I attended the first half of the Central Pennsylvania Open Source conference in Lancaster for the first time. I enjoy attending local conferences and I will be sure to attend this in the future as it was filled with interesting topics presented by a group of passionate presenters. I was quite impressed by the student showcase building robots, learning about linux laptops, and software defined radio. Below are some random notes and links during the my attendance.

Radio, Robots, and Real-time video: A showcase of student technology projects

GraphQL for the REST of Us: Adding a GraphQL API to a Rails App

Express your api as in your business domain

Everything in graphql has to return something, mutation can be used for creation.

Ensure you do not get yourself in a spot for the N+1 query issue...

Open Source Satellite Development

Lasts 4-5 Years life span

Power

CPU - 10 Watts
Radio - 1 Watt
Sensor - 2 Watts
Battery recharge - 2 Watts
Total Power - 15 Watts

Software

Ubuntu
Lamp
Python for GPIO
Python for PHP Bridge

Get data back

Uses TCP/IP system
Slow 9600 bps to 38kbps (on a good day)
Mostly sensor data
Occasional image (could take 4 days to retrieve an image)

The Demo Unit

Built a Pocket Quebec based web server

discovery.simple-url.com:8080

Going to Space

Launching Q2 - Q4 2019
Currently scheduled on Alba Orbital Cluster 2
Flying on a RocketLabs Electron from New Zealand

What Can Go Wrong

Failure to reach orbit (XKCD Up Goer Five)
Power Failure
Communication errors

Paying For It All

Expected to build with 50k budget
Actual costs close to 100k
Launching a Kickstarter to raise remaining funds
Launch cost is 30k (most expensive portion of the budget) hopeful the launch will go down to 10-15k (the problem is the paperwork and integration to know what it is and what it is going to do)

For around 8k you can create an antenna and join a collection that receives data.
https://satnogs.org

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Cover image credit: http://facebook.com/RodrigoMoraesPhotography

Mark Coleman

Mark Coleman is a full stack developer focusing on the latest in web technologies. Mark enjoys learning about new programming trends. Mark also likes to share his knowledge by attending local development groups and blogging (kramnameloc.com) about programming topics. When Mark is not absorbing everything development he enjoys photography, anything pertaining to The Simpsons, and a part time craft beer/bacon aficionado.