flight_log_gui.py

Source: tools/flight_log_gui.py

Desktop viewer for recorded AURORA flight logs — open a .bin straight off the SD card (or the whole card, DATA and STATE together) and page through the flight’s graphs without running a command line.

Note

The window is a front end, not a second implementation. binlog.py decodes the log and plot_flight_data.py draws every panel, so the plots the GUI shows are the plots the CLI writes.

What it does

  • Reads the binary flight log directly. The data logger’s bin formatter writes a raw frame stream (Binary Flight-Time Log), normally turned into CSV/Influx by the on-target conversion pass. This tool decodes those frames on the host instead, so a card pulled after a watchdog reset — before conversion ever ran — is still readable.

  • Browses a whole card. Point it at the card root or at the data logger directory on it — CONFIG_DATA_LOGGER_BASE_PATH (/DATA) is found either way — and every log is listed with its size: FLIGHT_N.bin first, then the converter’s FLIGHT_N.csv and FLIGHT_N.influx. Selecting one decodes it and lists the flights it holds.

  • Lists the card’s state audits. The state machine writes one AUDIT.<n> per boot to CONFIG_AURORA_STATE_MACHINE_AUDIT_BASE_PATH (/STATE), and nothing in a flight log points back at the audit that was running while it was written. So the sidebar lists them all, each with the number of flights and the timespan it covers, and the pairing is the operator’s to make.

  • Finds the flight window. Binary logs record sensor data only, so there is no ARMED → BOOST transition in the file. The audit picked in the sidebar supplies one when it has one; otherwise the boost and touchdown instants are recovered from the measurements using the same heuristics the CLI falls back to, and the status bar and plot title say which signal they came from.

  • Splits a log into segments. One .bin is one boot session, but a file can still hold several runs: a change of flight_id, a gap in the frame sequence, or an uptime clock that restarted mid-file (a watchdog or fatal-error reset) each start a new segment, listed separately under the file.

  • Light and dark, both matched to the Furo docs palette (doc/conf.py) — widgets and plots switch together.

Usage

python3 tools/flight_log_gui.py [PATH]
                                [--theme {light,dark}]
                                [--frame-size BYTES]

  • PATH — a flight log (.bin, .csv, .influx), a DATA directory or a card root to open on start-up. Optional; the window’s Open Log… and Open Card… buttons do the same thing.

  • --theme {light,dark} — initial colour theme (default light). Toggle it at any time with the button in the header.

  • --frame-size BYTES — override the frame-size probe. Only needed for a build whose CONFIG_DATA_LOGGER_BIN_FRAME_SIZE is not one of the sizes binlog.py probes.

The window

Area

What it holds

Flight logs

Tree of the opened card. Selecting a file decodes it and hangs its flights underneath.

State audit

The audits reachable from the card — STATE/AUDIT.<n>, or a single state_audit next to the logs — plus two standing choices. Automatic applies the audit whose transitions fall inside the log’s timeline (the row says which one won) and None always recovers the window from the measurements. Picking one re-cuts the log without decoding it again.

Graphs

The panels this flight has data for. Multi-select (ctrl/shift-click) to stack a subset; All / None are shortcuts.

Window

Flight window trims to the detected flight plus the pre-boost / post-end margins; Whole log plots the recording end to end. Kalman R feeds the NIS-gate replay and should match CONFIG_FILTER_R_MILLISCALE / 1000.

Summary

Frame and record counts, flight_id, peak altitude and velocity, per-stream sample counts, and any decode warnings.

Plot

The stacked panels, scrollable, with the matplotlib pan/zoom toolbar underneath. Export PNG… writes the current view at 150 dpi (PDF and SVG also work).

Panels are only offered for streams the log actually contains, so the list is shorter for a .csv (the firmware’s CSV formatter has no orientation column) than for the .bin it came from.

Note

An audit and a log line up only when they come from the same boot: both timestamp against the uptime clock, which restarts at zero every time the board does. That is what Automatic matches on, and why forcing an audit from another boot puts the flight window somewhere the log has no samples — the plot area then says so instead of drawing an empty window.

Requirements

  • Python 3.10+

  • numpy, matplotlib, pillow

  • tkinter — part of the standard library, but packaged separately on some distributions (python3-tkinter on Fedora, python3-tk on Debian/Ubuntu).

See also

  • binlog.py — the decoder, also usable from the command line and importable from other scripts.

  • plot_flight_data.py — the plotting module, and the CLI for logs that already have flights.influx and state_audit.