NeXtRAD Client Controller

Author: Zidaan Habib

The NextRAD client controller is software package to communicate with the NeXtRAD command application, and to interact with the Skywatcher AZEQ6 pedestal device. The following devies are required:

• Pi 4
• Waveshare L70 or (Quectel L70 - L80 series)

When started, the application starts an MQTT client and continously runs. When certain MQTT messages of a predefined type are received, the application interacts with the pedestal device, such as by causing it to slew in a given direction.

Licensing

GNU General Public v3

Installation:

1. Clone the repository
2. pip3 install -r requirements.txt

Alternatively, pip3 install nextrad_client

Setup:

• Replace ip address or host name of intended MQTT broker in config file in the root of the package
• Replace name of client in the config file - this will be the topic that the Pi's MQTT client will subscribe to

Running application:

• python3 app.py : this starts the client application and mqtt client and will continue indefinitely
• alternatively, if being run on Pi 4, you can run it in the provided Docker container
• in project root, run docker build -t <your_name> .
• After the image is built - docker run -p 1883:1883 <your_name>

Credits

The pynmea2 python library was used for GPS parsing of NMEA 0183 messages.