Sensor Emulator

Standalone Synapse-compatible emulators for:

• Radar TCP control/data protocol
• MAVLink telemetry stream
• LiDAR collector subprocess contract

Why this exists

synapse expects real hardware and device access. This repo emulates the same interfaces so development and CI can run without hardware.

Install

cd sensor-emulator
python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e .[test]

Run emulators

Radar only:

sensor-emulator radar --host 127.0.0.1 --ctrl-port 8100 --data-port 8101

MAVLink only:

sensor-emulator mavlink --host 127.0.0.1 --port 14550 --stream-hz 10

Radar + MAVLink:

sensor-emulator all --host 127.0.0.1 --ctrl-port 8100 --data-port 8101 --mavlink-port 14550

LiDAR collector mode (drop-in for LidarRunner subprocess):

export POINT_CLOUD_CSV_PATH=/tmp/lidar_point_cloud.csv
export IMU_DATA_CSV_PATH=/tmp/lidar_imu_data.csv
sensor-lidar-collector dummy-config-path

Synapse wiring

For Synapse LiDAR:

export LIDAR_EXEC_PATH=$(which python3)
export LIDAR_CONFIG_PATH=/absolute/path/to/sensor-emulator/src/sensor_emulator/lidar_collector.py

For Synapse radar, set RADAR_CONFIG_PATH to a config like:

{
  "ip": "127.0.0.1",
  "ctrlPort": 8100,
  "dataPort": 8101,
  "nSamples": 511,
  "headerFields": 16,
  "sampleBytes": 4,
  "timeout": 1.0
}

For Synapse MAVLink:

Use getMavlinkController(port=\"udpin:127.0.0.1:14550\", ...) in local tests.

Test suite

Run all tests:

pytest -q

Coverage intent:

• Radar command compatibility (STA?, IRF1, FMT?, #IRF, RUN , STOP)
• Radar frame binary layout + CSV generation through Synapse RadarController
• MAVLink heartbeat and required message set + Synapse MavlinkController CSV output
• LiDAR subprocess env contract + Synapse LidarRunner CSV output