Software and GUI | MCS
Introduction
The Arcturus MCS GUI is a software demonstration designed to demonstrate clients the actual GUI: a simple, intuitive interface to access all data from . The demo GUI combined a Python-based socket server, an MQTT client, and a graphical user interface (GUI) into a single, cohesive application.
At its core, the system is built on a multi-threaded Socket Server that listens for incoming TCP connections. This server is able to handle persistent data streams from numerous ESP32 microcontrollers simultaneously by auto multi-threading. Each connection is managed in an independent thread, ensuring that data from one sensor does not block or delay data from another. To maintain stability under load, the server implements intelligent connection management, including a configurable thread pool limit and automatic cleanup of inactive threads, preventing resource exhaustion—a common pitfall in continuous data ingestion systems.
The ingested data is then passed to the MQTT Manager module, the workhorse responsible for cloud communication. This module embodies reliability and stability. It establishes a connection with a configurable MQTT broker using authentication credentials. Its true robustness lies in its resilient design: it features automatic reconnection logic with an exponential backoff strategy, ensuring the system can gracefully recover from network interruptions without manual intervention. All MQTT operations are thread-safe, guaranteeing that concurrent data packets from multiple ESP32s are published to the designated topic without conflict or corruption, using a QoS level of 1 for guaranteed delivery.
The PyQt5-based GUI presents a clean, professional dashboard with dedicated status panels for each sensor node. It displays real-time values, automatically identifies the sensor type , and clearly indicates online/offline status. A prominent connection status bar provides immediate feedback on the health of the link to the MQTT broker. The GUI employs a stylesheet for a modern design, enhancing readability and providing a polished user experience.
In summary, the Arcturus MCS is more than a simple relay demonstration; it looks at a comprehensive data pipeline management system. It demonstrates a masterful integration of socket programming for device communication, the MQTT protocol for cloud messaging, and multi-threading for concurrent processing, all fronted by an intuitive GUI. Unfortunately due to financial constrains are we unable to get in touch in real orbital-spec hardware and to development on them. however by using all we know did this demonstration–only unable to communicate orbit; works well in far distance on Earth–showed our ideal MCS-GUI concept at Arcturus.
