OpenFSW

OpenFSW is an open-source Flight Software (FSW) + Ground + Simulation stack for a realistic 3U LEO CubeSat-style mission.

This repository contains:

• A bare-metal ARM/FreeRTOS firmware build (flight-side scaffolding + comms TM/TC)
• A Python simulation framework (orbit + attitude + environment + sensors + actuators)
• A Python ground-segment toolkit (telemetry decode/processing + telecommand generation/scheduling)

Creators

• Matheus Henrique (aka: TheusHen) — developer
• Iago Toledo — astrophysics student

Repository layout

• flight/ — flight software (C)
• ground/ — ground segment (Python)
• simulation/ — simulation framework + scenarios (Python)
• matlab/ — MATLAB mission analysis suite + advanced simulations
• linker/ — linker scripts for bare-metal builds
• third_party/ — vendor dependencies (e.g., FreeRTOS kernel)
• tools/ — automation scripts (run-all pipeline)
• docs/ — design notes, protocols, standards, safety

Quick start

1) Run the complete validation pipeline (recommended)

This runs:

• ARM firmware configure/build + ctest
• Python unit tests (pytest)
• Simulations + scenario runs
• Ground example

It writes full logs + exported data (CSV/JSON/JUnit XML) + PNG plots into build/reports/.

Run:

python3 tools/run_all.py --profile smoke

Profiles:

• smoke (default): fast, still generates complete artifacts
• standard: moderate runtime
• full: heavier/longer runs

Detumble note: convergence is intentionally evaluated over tens of minutes (not a 3-minute window).

Artifacts:

• build/reports/latest/ (most recent)
• build/reports/<timestamp>/ (archived run)

2) Firmware build (ARM bare-metal)

Configure + build (cross compile):

cmake -S . -B build-arm -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=cmake/arm-none-eabi.cmake -G "Unix Makefiles"

cmake --build build-arm -j

Run tests registered with CTest:

ctest --test-dir build-arm --output-on-failure

Note: this is a bare-metal build; host execution is not performed.

3) Run simulations only

PYTHONPATH=. python3 -m simulation.examples.run_simulation

Or use the pipeline runner to generate plots/data:

python3 tools/run_all.py --skip-firmware --profile smoke

Current validation snapshot (generated artifacts)

After running tools/run_all.py, inspect:

• Logs: build/reports/latest/logs/
• Data exports: build/reports/latest/data/
• Plots: build/reports/latest/images/

Example detumble metrics are emitted into build/reports/latest/data/detumble_results.json.

Documentation

See docs/ for deeper notes and the documentation index in docs/README.md.

MATLAB advanced simulations

The matlab/ directory contains a higher-fidelity mission analysis suite with J2 + drag + SRP orbit propagation, detumble attitude dynamics, power budget modeling, and link budget sweeps. Run all scripts with:

matlab -batch "run('matlab/simulations/run_all.m')"

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