HyperScape100 Emulator

The HyperScape100 Emulator streams ICD-compliant session data over TCP, simulating the LVDS data interface and I2C/SPI control interface for development without hardware. It includes an interactive TUI client for visualizing the data stream in real time.

HyperScape100

The HyperScape100 is a hyperspectral pushbroom imager built by Simera Sense for CubeSat and small satellite platforms. It captures up to 32 spectral bands across the visible and near-infrared range using a CMV12000 sensor with a linear variable filter. Missions flying the HyperScape100 include the Wyvern Dragonette constellation, TRL Space TROLL, Xplore XCUBE, and ESA's upcoming OPS-SAT VOLT.

How the Emulator Works

The emulator reads pre-converted scene data from disk and streams it as ICD-compliant packets over two TCP ports:

1. Scene data is loaded line-by-line from disk. No full-scene buffering, works with multi-GB scenes.
2. Each line is wrapped in ICD packet framing with headers, CRC-32 footers, and interleaved telemetry.
3. The packet stream is sent over TCP :4001 (data port) to your application.
4. Your application sends band reconfiguration or scene navigation commands back via TCP :4002 (control port).
5. The emulator responds with a new session using the updated configuration.

Features

Session Stream

The emulator produces the exact packet stream defined by the xScape Control and Data ICD (doc 051715):

Packet	ID	Contains
SESSION START	0x00	Session ID, platform/instrument IDs
IMAGER INFORMATION	0xA0	Product ID, serial, firmware version
IMAGER CONFIGURATION	0xA1	Band wavelengths, TDI stages, line period
TIME SYNCHRONISATION	0x07	Imager-to-platform time correlation
SCENE START	0x02	Scene type, width, height
IMAGER TELEMETRY	0xA3	Sensor temperature (every 500ms)
EXPOSURE START	0x03	Timestamp (one per line)
LINE DATA	0x04	Pixel data (one per band per line)
IMAGER TELEMETRY	0xA3	Final telemetry
SESSION END	0x01	Session ID

TUI Client

The included terminal client is a convenient demo of how to interact with the emulator. It connects to the TCP ports, parses the ICD packet stream in real time, and renders a false-color scene preview with live stats. Use it as a reference for building your own integration.

Integrating with the Emulator

To build software that consumes the HyperScape100 data stream:

1. Connect to the data port (default 4001) via TCP.
2. Scan for the sync word 0x5353 to find packet boundaries.
3. Parse the 8-byte header to get the packet ID and payload length.
4. Validate the CRC-32 footer (zlib-compatible).
5. Process packets by ID using the session stream format above.
6. Reassemble spectral data. Each LINE DATA packet contains one band for one line.

To reconfigure bands, connect to the control port (default 4002) and send RCFG + band count + wavelengths. To switch scenes, send NSCN + direction. The src/packets/ library provides ready-to-use C functions for packet parsing and serialization.

Scene Data

The recommended data source is the Wyvern Open Data Program, which provides free hyperspectral imagery from the same HyperScape100 sensor under CC BY 4.0. A Python converter transforms GeoTIFFs to the emulator's raw format, producing data as it would come from the camera hardware.

Quick Start

# Build
mkdir build && cd build && cmake .. && make

# Convert scene data
pip install -r tools/requirements.txt
python tools/convert.py path/to/scene.tiff -o data/

# Terminal 1: start emulator
./build/emu --scene data/

# Terminal 2: start TUI client
cd client && cargo run --release

Resources

• GitHub Repository
• Simera Sense HyperScape100
• Wyvern Open Data Program
• MIT License