CUSF Standalone Predictor - Version 2

Working on improving the Cambridge University Spaceflight landing predictor, a web-based tool for predicting the flight path and landing location of latex balloons.

Install

The source for the predictor itself is in pred_src/ and instructions for building it can be found there.

The following items need to be executable (chmod +x ./predict.py) by the user under which the predictor runs:

• predict.py
• pred_src/pred (once compiled)
• cron/clear-pydap-cache-cronjob.sh
• cron/purge-predictions-cronjob.sh

The predict/preds/ and gfs/ directories need to have rwx access by the PHP interpreter and the predict.py python script. You will need to install the following python packages: pydap, numpy, json, simple-json. We use at to automatically background the predictor, so you will need that installed.

Other than that, just clone this repo to a non web-accessible folder and create symlinks to the predict/ and hourly-predictions/ directories in the repo.

There are useful configuration options in predict/includes/config.inc.php.

Information

The two bash scripts in the cron/ directory should both be run daily. clear-pydap-cache-cronjob.sh clears the cache used by pydap so that old data does not build up. purge-predictions-cronjob.sh deletes scenarios and predictions not accessed or modified within the last 7 days. Re-running a prediction for a scenario will therefore reset its time to live to 7 more days.

The directory names are UUIDs comprised of an SHA1 hash of the launch parameters, and re-running predictions will overwrite data in the existing directory, rather than create a new one.

Credits & Acknowledgments

Credit as detailed in individual files, but notably:

• Rich Wareham - The new predictor and the hourly predictor system
• Fergus Noble, Ed Moore and many others

Adam Greig - http://www.randomskk.net - random@randomskk.net
Jon Sowman - http://www.hexoc.com - jon@hexoc.com

Copyright CUSF 2010 - All Rights Reserved