plot_flight_data.py¶

Plot AURORA flight data — recorded telemetry from the flight computer or simulated streams produced by sim_flight_kalman.py.

What it does¶

This is the dedicated plotting tool for the AURORA flight stack. It covers two use cases:

Standalone CLI: python3 plot_flight_data.py --flight DIR segments the log under DIR into individual flights on ARMED → BOOST transitions and produces one multi-panel plot per flight, with state-machine transitions drawn as labelled vertical markers on every panel. DIR is expected to contain flights.influx (line-protocol telemetry) and state_audit (state-machine transition log).
Imported module: sim_flight_kalman.py imports the module and calls plot_flight(...) to render the seven-panel plot of its simulated output.

The tool does not run the Kalman filter or attitude tracker itself. What it does carry, on top of pure plotting, is the log-loading and replay glue needed to turn raw telemetry into the curves that the plot panels expect — pressure → altitude conversion, NIS-gate replay against the logged Kalman altitude, the three-vote apogee replay, and the boost/landed-recovery heuristics for logs whose state machine never reached BOOST.

Note

The replay panels (NIS gate, apogee votes) approximate the firmware behaviour from logged streams alone. The on-board covariance is not telemetered, so the gate is evaluated under a steady-state assumption. Treat the markers as a sanity check, not as a perfect re-run.

Usage¶

python3 tools/plot_flight_data.py --flight DIR
                                  [--theme {light,dark,both}]
                                  [--show] [--disable-votes]
                                  [--pre-boost SECONDS]
                                  [--post-end SECONDS]
                                  [--title TITLE]
                                  [--trim [SECONDS]]
                                  [--r-meas R_MEAS]

Data selection¶

--flight DIR — required; flight directory containing flights.influx and state_audit.
--pre-boost SECONDS — seconds of pre-boost data to keep per flight (default 10).
--post-end SECONDS — seconds of data to keep after the flight close-out transition, trimming the long post-parachute tail (default 2).

Replay¶

--r-meas R_MEAS — assumed Kalman measurement variance (m²) used to approximate the NIS gate from logged baro vs sm_pose. Match CONFIG_FILTER_R_MILLISCALE / 1000 for the flight build (default 6.0).
--disable-votes — drop the apogee-vote panel (useful when the logged streams are known to be unreliable, e.g. a stuck pointer in the logger).

Output¶

--theme {light,dark,both} — render plots matching the Furo Sphinx docs theme (default both).
--show — open the plots in an interactive matplotlib window in addition to writing them to disk.
--title TITLE — override the plot title (applied to every plot the run produces).
--trim [SECONDS] — write a trimmed copy of flights.influx next to the original, covering each flight’s plot window expanded by SECONDS on each side (default 10 when --trim is given without a value). Useful for shrinking long pad-time logs before sharing them.

Plots are written to flight<N>.png in the current directory, with _light / _dark suffixes when --theme both is used.

Reuse from other scripts¶

The plotting and log-handling helpers are designed to be importable. The most useful entry points are:

parse_influx(path), parse_state_audit(path), segment_flights(events) — load telemetry and split a log into flights.
slice_real_flight(...) — trim raw streams to one flight window.
compute_log_votes(sliced), compute_log_gated(sliced, r_meas) — replay the apogee votes and NIS gate from logged streams.
altitude_to_pressure(h) / pressure_to_altitude(p, p_ref) — ISA conversions.
plot_flight(...) — seven-panel plot used by sim_flight_kalman.py.
plot_raw_flight(...) — multi-panel raw-telemetry plot used by the CLI above.

Requirements¶

Python 3.10+
numpy, matplotlib