teknofest ground station (turksat)
A complete ground control and telemetry solution built for the Teknofest 2024 Model Satellite Competition. The system spans two platforms — a feature-rich desktop ground station and a Raspberry Pi satellite payload — connected over WebSockets for real-time flight data collection, transmission, and visualization.
The Context
Teknofest is one of the largest aerospace and technology competitions in the world. The model satellite category requires teams to design both the satellite payload and the ground control system that monitors it. Every sensor reading, orientation shift, and GPS coordinate during flight flows through this system.
What It Does
A real-time telemetry dashboard renders live altitude, pressure, temperature, and GPS data using PyQtGraph. A Folium-based interactive map plots the satellite's trajectory with live polyline updates as coordinates stream in. A VTK-powered 3D widget visualizes roll, pitch, and yaw in real time — giving the team immediate spatial awareness of the satellite's orientation mid-flight. All telemetry is automatically logged to CSV for post-flight blackbox analysis. A standalone CSV simulator allows full ground station testing without a live satellite connection.
The Satellite Payload
The Raspberry Pi payload interfaces directly with environmental and orientation sensors — BMP390 for altitude and pressure, TMP117 for temperature, and BNO055 for 3D orientation — via Adafruit CircuitPython libraries. A Flask server on the Pi handles log access and media streaming alongside the telemetry pipeline.
Architecture
Dual-platform design with async WebSocket communication handling concurrent sensor streams and ground station updates. The data pipeline flows continuously from sensor acquisition through transmission, visualization, and logging — with no blocking operations on either end.