eggStation - an eggTimer ground station software build thread.

[Charles_McG]

@Charles_McG
Them's a lot of apples....

I haven’t updated the tracker, but I think we’re at about 100 bushels of pears and 60 bushels of apples. That’s my wife and I between business close and sunset, and extra help from an industry friend, @dr-ws and a bunch from @Old School Doug. Started the first fermentations this week - nearly 300 gallons of tannic Perry.

 

[dr-ws]

I haven’t updated the tracker, but I think we’re at about 100 bushels of pears and 60 bushels of apples. That’s my wife and I between business close and sunset, and extra help from an industry friend, @dr-ws and a bunch from @Old School Doug. Started the first fermentations this week - nearly 300 gallons of tannic Perry.

Non-rocket comment: if you have not yet tried their ciders and/or perries, please try one or several. I truly believe that if you have any interest in a hard cider or perry, you will be [pun sort of intended here] hard-pressed to find an equal not just regionally, but nationally. They ARE that good!

Now, back to ground station discussion.

 

[atestani]

Non-rocket comment: if you have not yet tried their ciders and/or perries, please try one or several. I truly believe that if you have any interest in a hard cider or perry, you will be [pun sort of intended here] hard-pressed to find an equal not just regionally, but nationally. They ARE that good!

Is there a website where we can order?

 

[Charles_McG]

www.appletrue.com - but be forewarned, shipping booze is harder than shipping rocket motors.

 

[dr-ws]

Is there a website where we can order?

[For those living within driving distance:] Come fly with us (WOOSHROCKETRY.ORG, or https://www.tripoliwisconsin.org/) at Bong (https://dnr.wisconsin.gov/topic/parks/richardbong), then, before 5 pm, make the 1-2 mile drive to the cidery. The only disappointment you might experience would be one of OUR [Bong's] trees, not the cidery's!

Now, again, back to ground stations!

 

[cerving]

D

www.appletrue.com - but be forewarned, shipping booze is harder than shipping rocket motors.

Yeah, Charles can't ship to CA... dang.

 

[NTP2]

Yeah, Charles can't ship to CA... dang.

how long can you drive

 

[Charles_McG]

D

Yeah, Charles can't ship to CA... dang.

CA requires an extra permit, plus annual filing of sales tax, excise tax, and business income tax - even if all zeros. After three years of $50/year in sales, I gave up and dropped the CA permit.

 

[atestani]

Haven't done any rocketry for a while.... went in for a simple stent in a minor artery and ended up having triple bypass surgery! However, I am back and going to a launch in a couple of weeks. Along the way a few things came up on EggStation. Any news on these?

1. Adding a setting to select whether GPS or baro altitude is used to build the KML file
2. Fixing the bug where flight state display reverts to earlier states when it gets a partial packet
3. Fix for the flashing Google Earth display

@Charles_McG, I know you are busy with the apples, etc. but I have a big launch this weekend and can't get my EggStation working. I wonder if you can give me some quick information on how to fix this? I have a good GPS fix as shown on the EggFinder LCD screen and also verified using VisualGPSView on the same COM port (COM 3) which is what I have in the EggStation settings (at 9600 8n1). The problem is that as soon as I click on "Booster GPS", I get the following error dialog. The only thing I could come up with for troubleshooting was to verify that GPS data was present on COM3 and correct using VisualGPSView. Any advice?

Thanks.

 

[Charles_McG]

That does look like the COM port is missing. During development, I had some period trouble with the USB port of the dongle receiver changing. It would be stable for a while, and then shift, incrementing up.

The other thought is to double check the settings in eggStation. There have been instances when settings got lost, or the whole config file was re-initalized, or maybe even attempted to be read from the wrong path. I thought I had nailed those down - but it's been a while.

 

[atestani]

That does look like the COM port is missing. During development, I had some period trouble with the USB port of the dongle receiver changing. It would be stable for a while, and then shift, incrementing up.

The other thought is to double check the settings in eggStation. There have been instances when settings got lost, or the whole config file was re-initalized, or maybe even attempted to be read from the wrong path. I thought I had nailed those down - but it's been a while.

Thanks. I cleaned up all of the USB COM Ports (including hidden ones) and all is good now.

 

[atestani]

Haven't done any rocketry for a while.... went in for a simple stent in a minor artery and ended up having triple bypass surgery! However, I am back and going to a launch in a couple of weeks. Along the way a few things came up on EggStation. Any news on these?

1. Adding a setting to select whether GPS or baro altitude is used to build the KML file
2. Fixing the bug where flight state display reverts to earlier states when it gets a partial packet
3. Fix for the flashing Google Earth display

So are these problems/feature requests going to be handled??

 

[Charles_McG]

How much support did you pay for?

 

[atestani]

How much support did you pay for?

I didn't know I needed to. I thought you put all of this up for us to use. There never was anything about purchasing or paying for support.

So... do I understand that you are not supporting the software you posted and I and other who built EggStations are just out now? That's fine, but you should have said so when you first posted!

 

[Charles_McG]

First up, some caveats:
a) This isn't an eggTimer Rocketry project. I'm doing on my own, for fun. I did check with Cris about using the egg prefix, though.
b) I'm as much a hobbyist coder as I am a hobbyist rocketeer. YMMV.
c) I'm a biologist and a chemist. And an accidental data scientist. This project has another purpose - to refresh my coding skills for the day job.

I’ve never asked for money. But expecting continuous support for free is unreasonable. The best I’m going to manage is intermittent support.

I’ve my own small business. That is in the middle of fermentation season. I’m the hired manager for a boutique apple orchard that is just past harvest, and not done with sales, or post harvest cleanup. And I’m back full time at my career job as a chemist and data scientist in the petroleum refining industry.

I barely got to burn any propellant at all this past flying season. And when I did, I flew r/c rocket gliders. I wrote eggStation while in my two-stage phase. And while I’m proud of what I wrote, and not uninterested in it, I’m out of minutes right now.


Plus, I released all the source code.

 

[atestani]

I’ve never asked for money. But expecting continuous support for free is unreasonable. The best I’m going to manage is intermittent support.

I’ve my own small business. That is in the middle of fermentation season. I’m the hired manager for a boutique apple orchard that is just past harvest, and not done with sales, or post harvest cleanup. And I’m back full time at my career job as a chemist and data scientist in the petroleum refining industry.

I barely got to burn any propellant at all this past flying season. And when I did, I flew r/c rocket gliders. I wrote eggStation while in my two-stage phase. And while I’m proud of what I wrote, and not uninterested in it, I’m out of minutes right now.


Plus, I released all the source code.

Nothing continuous here, I asked for these 3 changes a couple of times before. I only asked for the things you said you were going to fix some time ago. In fact, #2 was a bug you found and said you wanted to fix. FWIW, I waited until when I thought you were done with the apple season, so I apologize for asking again when you are still very busy.

If you ever do get back to Eggstation, please let us know. Thanks for what you've done thus far.