Kerbal Telemetry. Telemetry Visualization in NASAs Mission Control Software

[Overloader]

There's one thing Kerbal Space Program is missing. It allows you to build and fly your own rockets, to explore the solar system, even our own with RSS. And you can build even more realistic rockets with Realism Overhaul.

But there is one aspect of spaceflight missing that Kerbal Telemetry is trying to provide: Mission Control.

This software, based on NASAS open source mission control software  openmct, allows you to set up mission control on your own PC!

Installing, Running and Updating

Installing
First thing you'll need is the Telemachus mod for ksp. you can either get it from CKAN or get ericjdevelopers fork In the future it will probably only work with his fork because Telemachus isn't in developement anymore and were planning to clean some things up and add new features but for now the standard Telemachus Reborn mod from CKAN works fine

Once you got the mod, you need to install NodeJS on your pc. Version 14 is recommended. This is the framework openmct uses.

Next download and unzip the source of one of the releases (If you're unsure which one you'll probably want to download the "Source code (zip)" of the newest release) or, if you're more tech savy, clone the repository.

Once you got the source code you need to open a command line in the kerbal-telemetry directory, type in  `npm install` and hit enter. This will install all dependencies openmct needs. Sometimes this stop at `webpack compiled` followed by anumber of warnings. If you hit that point and it doesnt finish by itself, it's safe to stop it by pressing `Ctrl+C`

Running
Once again, open a command line in the kerbal-telemetry directory and type in `npm start`, then hit enter. This starts openmct. Once its running, leave the command line open and open your browser, then go to http://localhost:8080/ and  you're there! When you're done playing KSP, close the site, head back into the command prompt where openmct is running and press `Ctrl + C` to stop Kerbal Telemetry.

There are two things to note once you're on the site: When you are trying to look at telemetry and can't see anything,  first try to see if on the lower left corner it says `Fixed Timespan` or `Local Clock`. You'll only see telemtry when it's set to local clock.

Theres also an annoying warning about `Missing request provider, see console for details`. It's obnoxious but for now  just ignore it, thats going to get fixed at a later date.

Updating
If you downloaded the source code from the  releases, just download the new version from there, delete the old kerbal-telemetry directory and replace it with the new one. All yourlayouts, settings and stuff like that should be saved. Then run `npm install` again.

If you used git to clone this repo, just run a `git pull` followed up by a `npm install` in case there are new/updated  dependencies and you're good to go.

Using Kerbal Telemetry
Nasa has a nice Live Demo that you can use to learn the basics of what openmct has to offer

Add your own Resources
KSP Openmct is able to track all the stock Resources like Liquid Fuel, Oxidizer etc.

But what if you play with mods and have other resources like Kerosene? Well it's simple. Just go into the ksp openmct directory, open a command prompt and type `addResource.ps1 "Your Resource"` on windows or `./addResource.sh "Your Resource"` on linux (I don't own an apple product so I can't tell you how to or even if you can do it there. My guess is the linux approach works). Note that the quotation marks are important

When you update Kerbal Telemetry you either have to add your resources again or make a backup of the following file:  `ksp-openmct/src/plugins/kerbal-telemetry/dictionaries/r.json`

Contributing.
If you want to help either this project or ericjdevelopers fork of telemachus join us on Discord!

Credits
Currently all of this is written by myself but in the future there might be contributions by others.

Also I will be working together with ericjdeveloper who is creating a fork of Telemachus to add new features.


This project is a fork of NASAS openmct, which is licensed under the APACHE license and the biggest part of the code belongs to NASA. Thank you NASA for making this amazing piece of software open source!

 

License

Spoiler

MIT License

Copyright (c) 2021-2022 Lukas Voreck

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
SOFTWARE.

 

Edited January 14, 2022 by Overloader
Update to 2.0.1

[Drew Kerman]

You didn't reference this so I will assume you are unaware of it - https://github.com/hudsonfoo/kerbal-openmct

There is a thread also here on the Add-on Development forum but a quick search turned up the github repository first.

Anyways this is just to help you with your project

[Overloader]

5 hours ago, Drew Kerman said:

You didn't reference this so I will assume you are unaware of it - https://github.com/hudsonfoo/kerbal-openmct

It was precisely because I found that repo that I made this. You see, that plugin is outdated and doesn't work with the current version of openmct anymore, that's why I wrote a new one
 

 

6 hours ago, Drew Kerman said:

There is a thread also here on the Add-on Development forum but a quick search turned up the github repository first.

That's something I wasn't aware of, I'll look into it

[Overloader]

KSP Openmct has just been updated to version 1.1.0!

Changelog

• Made the code clearer and easier to maintain
• Added folders

About the folders: I put everything in folders that was grouped together by telemachus. For some things I didn't know what to name the folders so I just gave them one letter names like telemachus does. If you have some idea how to name them please let me know!

The original post has been updated to reflect these changes as well

Edited September 6, 2021 by Overloader

[Overloader]

KSP Openmct has just been updated to version 1.2.0!

Changelog

• added the stock resources like Liquid Fuel, Oxidizer etc
• Added a tool to ad your own resources (If you're playing modded or realism overhaul the stock resources wont get you too far.) to use it type

  java -jar AddResources.jar "example Resource"

  in a command line

The original post will be updated in a few minutes

[Overloader]

Two updates aftrer a while:

2.0.0 Changelog:

• The project has been renamed to Kerbal Telemetry
• You dont need java anymore to add resources!
• The previous version has been broken by some dependencies getting deprecated and For some reason I couldnt just fix it. So to make it easier 2.0.0 is a fork of openmct

 

2.0.1 Changelog:

• Removed some left over debug statements
• There is a new and (hopefully) improved Readme (I also improved the original post)
• Linux users can now access all commands from a single script. It isnt in the readme yet but you can see them by typing `./kerbal-telemetry help`

 

[infinite_monkey]

Nice mod! The button shows up multiple times on the right side, though. But not always. Maybe once per new flight?

[Overloader]

I havent worked on this in a hot minute, might pick it up in a bit and look into your issue

 

[wreckreation]

Per your comment here:  

might I suggest KerbalMCT as a name?

[linuxgurugamer]

On 8/22/2022 at 10:57 AM, infinite_monkey said:

Nice mod! The button shows up multiple times on the right side, though. But not always. Maybe once per new flight?

 

On 8/23/2022 at 7:38 PM, Overloader said:

I havent worked on this in a hot minute, might pick it up in a bit and look into your issue

 

Sounds like it might not be removing the button when the scene changes

[infinite_monkey]

@linuxgurugamer: As mentioned in the Janitor's Closet thread mentioned by @wreckreation, this is NOT the mod with the button issue. I was using another mod with the same name, and as far as I know that one has no forum thread. The other one is affected, I never used this one.

[Overloader]

On 8/22/2022 at 4:57 PM, infinite_monkey said:

Nice mod! The button shows up multiple times on the right side, though. But not always. Maybe once per new flight?

I didnt understand you meant in gamer, i thought in the mct software it showed it multiple times

 

On 9/8/2022 at 1:45 AM, wreckreation said:

Per your comment here:  

might I suggest KerbalMCT as a name?

Once I start working on this again I might. I considered that name but theres a dead project with the same name. I'll try to reach out to the author of that