# AltOS

AltOS is the name of Keith's firmware "operating system" for 
[TeleMetrum](../TeleMetrum/) and [TeleDongle](../TeleDongle/).

In addition to the firmware for [TeleMetrum](../TeleMetrum) and 
[TeleDongle](../TeleDongle) boards, the AltOS source tree also includes a
number of utilities useful for monitoring and logging telemetry during flight,
post-processing flight data for analysis, and utilities for updating firmware,
and developing and debugging new functionality.  The first generation of these
utilities were Linux-only, but our current second-generation software written
largely in [Java](http://java.com) with a small platform-specific library 
works identically on Windows, Mac, and Linux systems!

The firmware and associated software are licensed [GPL version 2](http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html)

## Available Versions ##

[[!inline pages="./releases/* and !*/Discussion and !*.bz2 and !*.zip and !*.exe" show="10" rss="no" actions="no" ]]

The latest source is always available from [git.gag.com](http://git.gag.com) 
in the project [fw/altos](http://git.gag.com/?p=fw/altos;a=summary).  

## Features ##

More documentation is coming soon, but in the meantime, 
most operations in the second-generation GUI are pretty easy to figure out.

## Platform Specific Notes ##

### Linux ###

If you use [Debian](http://www.debian.org), then a pre-built package for 
32-bit x86 is currently available here:

	wget -O - http://altusmetrum.org/apt/altusmetrum.key | apt-key add -
	wget -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/altos.list http://altusmetrum.org/apt/altos.list
	apt-get update
	apt-get install altos

If you use some other distribution of Linux, then 
a Linux package of our second-generation Java bits that 
should run on any distribution with a modern Java version is also 
available.  Unlike the Debian pacakge, which depends on various libraries
already part of the Debian distribution, this package includes a "fat" jar
file with all of the Java libraries that aren't part of the basic Java runtime
environment included, so it should "just work" on any system with 
Java 6.  Development and testing is done with OpenJDK 6, but current 
downloads from [java.com](http://java.com) should be fine too.

If you'd rather build from source, our source tree includes documentation on 
how to build packages for various
Linux systems such as [Arch Linux](http://www.archlinux.org), and the 
debian/ directory contains all the control
files for building the Debian packages on other architectures or derivatives
such as [Ubuntu](http://ubuntu.com).

Bdale has also created a theme for 
[GDM](http://projects.gnome.org/gdm/) that he uses on his primary notebook,
and the 
[Simple Login Manager](http://slim.berlios.de/) that he uses on all of his
other machines and which is ideally suited for machines dedicated to AltOS 
ground station use.  It includes a photo of a drag-race between 
nearly-identical rockets
built by Keith and Bdale, that was the first time either of us gave TeleMetrum
complete control of a rocket flight without some other backup!  See the themes/
directory in the source tree (the themes are included in the Debian package).

### Mac ###

A Mac OS X package that is compatible with 
versions 10.5 "Leopard" and later (including 10.6 "Snow Leopard") is 
available.  The Mac operating system includes Java, and all Altus Metrum
products show up as simple USB serial ports, so this should just work
with no additional drivers or other dependency issues.  Older versions of 
the Mac operating system come with Java versions that are too old for use 
with Altus Metrum software, and we know of no way to update the Java version
other than upgrading to a newer operating system.

### Windows ###

Our Windows package is known to work on at least some flavors of XP, Vista, and 
Windows 7 Enterprise. If you don't already have Java installed, 
download and install a current Java 6 version from [java.com](http://java.com)
first.  Then download our installer and run it.  Windows already has 
the required USB serial device driver, and our package should do the right
things to bind it to our devices, but if you get a complaint about the device
being unrecognized, try pointing to the copy of the telemetrum.inf file 
included in the package directory manually.  Reports of success or failure 
with other versions of Windows would be appreciated!