Welcome
This site aims to be a comprehensive guide to COSMOS. We’ll cover topics such as getting your configuration up and running, developing test and operations scripts, building custom telemetry screens, and give you some advice on participating in the future development of COSMOS itself.
Click here for a PDF version of this webpage
So what is Ball Aerospace COSMOS, exactly?
COSMOS is a suite of applications that can be used to control a set of embedded systems. These systems can be anything from test equipment (power supplies, oscilloscopes, switched power strips, UPS devices, etc), to development boards (Arduinos, Raspberry Pi, Beaglebone, etc), to satellites.
COSMOS Architecture
COSMOS implements a client server architecture with the Command and Telemetry Server and the various other tools typically acting as clients to retreive data. The Command and Telemetry Server connects to the Targets (green circles) and sends commands and receives telemetry (status data) from them. Targets are the items you’re trying to control or get status from. The arrows from the Server to the targets indicate Interfaces which can be over TCP/IP, serial, UDP/IP, or a custom interface that you define. Yellow boxes indicate data items like configuration files, log files, reports, etc.
Keep reading for an in-depth discussion of each of the COSMOS Tools.
Helpful Hints
Throughout this guide there are a number of small-but-handy pieces of information that can make using COSMOS easier, more interesting, and less hazardous. Here’s what to look out for.
ProTips™ help you get more from COSMOS
These are tips and tricks that will help you be a COSMOS wizard!
Notes are handy pieces of information
These are for the extra tidbits sometimes necessary to understand COSMOS.
Warnings help you not blow things up
Be aware of these messages if you wish to avoid certain death.
You'll see this by a feature that hasn't been released
Some pieces of this website are for future versions of COSMOS that are not yet released.
Find a problem in the documentation?
Please create an issue on GitHub describing what we can do to make it better.
Let us know what could be better!
Both using and hacking on COSMOS should be fun, simple, and easy, so if for some reason you find it's a pain, please create an issue on GitHub describing your experience so we can make it better.