Python and spacecraft onboard or ground control scripting

Chris Liechti cliechti at gmx.net
Wed Apr 10 18:05:03 EDT 2002


marilyn.mix at omitron.com (M. J. Mix) wrote in 
news:7226483f.0204101216.2c8fcda4 at posting.google.com:
> Is anyone using Python as a spacecraft ground system scripting
> language, or onboard (embedded) language?

i once runned it on a embedded linux PPC 60Mhz worked basicaly fine. there 
is a Palm port (pippy). don't expect it to run on a embedded chip with 64k 
RAM or so.

in what time frame do you think? don't expect from python to react within 
microseconds but its well suited for a timeframe above, say, 100ms (stronly 
dependant on your hardware and sw design). i have an app with hardrealtime 
constaints and 180ms reaction time. it works fine on a pentium class PC, 
never tried slower ones.
 
> Pros and cons when compared with TCL or JAVAScript.  Just 
> some real life, honest opinions.

i don't realy know those. form the small amount of JS that i did for web 
programming, i can only say that python is much more powerful and simpler.
when it come to GUI and more you have powerful libraries for python but not 
for JS.
 
> The usual issues: reliability and maintenance effort in applications. 
> Also, use as a scripting language by non-programmers. (I saw the post
> on indenting, so I'm concerned about that.)

for maintanance and non-programmers is python very well suited!

its also very reliable. i run a pure python webserver since weeks 24/7 
without problems. the exception mechanism makes it easy to write fault 
tolerant SW.

don't care about the indentation - thats easy to learn.
some people don't like it and others like to fight problems by mixing tabs 
and spaces in an editor with Tab=4 spaces. if you stick with spaces the 
indentation-is-syntax in python is much more saver than counting braces.

chris

-- 
Chris <cliechti at gmx.net>




More information about the Python-list mailing list