AlphaPixel recently completed work on several developments for a confidential aerospace startup, including a library for interfacing with GPS/INS devices called DynamicTrack. While the core software for this client was proprietary and still under non-disclosure, the client gratefully agreed to place the DynamicTrack library under an Open Source license (MIT) to allow it to be re-used and extended for other tasks, users and projects.

Originally just called ‘libINS’, as we began developing it we realized that the same interface design that allowed us to abstract away communicating position/orientation snapshots with GPS/INS would also be suitable for fetching data from gyros, ADS-B tracking, APRS, AIS and other realtime or stored-database tracking systems. So, we renamed the library and adjusted the interfaces a little bit to generalize them further.

This library is now available on GitHub. More work would need to be done to add support for opening communication channels with different classes of device (via some sort of URL interpretation, probably) and enumerating what devices, entities and data channels might be available. Currently DynamicTrack supports real-time communication with serially-attached VectorNav VN-200 INS devices.

Check out DynamicTrack now!