This week I completed the entire firmware for the DSKY, including the VERB-NOUN pair acquisition and the creation of packets to be sent through UART to the FPGA. Furthermore, I completed a Bluetooth module that will emulate as a “telemetry” between the AGC and Ground Station “Houston” or the Python demo script. The firmware is multithreaded (FreeRTOS) and therefore I ran into extremely unpleasant bugs with race conditions and priority inversions, but all issues have been finally resolved. The plan is to use the DSKY’s ESP32 module to receive mission data via Bluetooth, and allow the AGC to perform calculations on the data then send them back through the Bluetooth channels. At this moment, the DSKY firmware and hardware is fully verified and I plan on working on integration with the AGC and completing the Python demo next week.
Bringing the Apollo Guidance Computer to the 21st century