GUI Main

The Main-GUI Program

The satellite main-gui was developed using Qt, an integrated development environment for Linux, and written in C++. Below is a screenshot of the GUI.

Walkthrough

There are 3 main sections to the GUI:

The Map area is the first section of the GUI. This has the map as a globe by default, although the layout can be changed to a flat earth view. In this area, the satellite orbit can be animated to see its position at a particular time. It has the ability to animate the satellite position in the past, present and future.

The second section is the controls panel. This section is sub-divied into 5 different tabs.

• The Satellite tab allows you to select satellite(s) and a time frame you want to get the animation and the orbital information for. Multiple satellite selection is permitted but the more the satellites, the more the latency in fetching the required information for each satellite.

• Next tab is the Rotator tab. This tab has the socket connectivity feature. It allows a user to create or join a socket connection and in this case, the rotator on the raspberry pi 3. The server and client must both be on the same network and the rotator IP address known. The port is fixed at the moment on port 1967.

• The Automatic tab allow for the selection of a single satellite to track and sending that information to the rotator. It is worth noting that there must be an established connection between the rotator and the main-GUI.

• The Manual tab lets you manually control the rotators over the sockets in real time as you adjust the values on the main-GUI. The user has the choice to manually control either the Azimuth (0° to 360°) or Elevation (0° to 90° to 0°) using the slider controls or, use the radar map to control both Azimuth and Elevation simultaneously.

• Finally, the Radio tab is a future addition that will allow you to remotely stream the downloaded radio data via sockets on port 80 in the browser. We want to have a feature of adjusting the radio frequency, save the data and transmit all from the comfort of your home.

Below is a full demonstration of Main-GUI usage.