Building Real-Time Control Software: Lessons from Hyperloop
summary
Team built a base station that achieves 11ms latency end-to-end between pod and GUI by moving from Python to Rust + Qt + React, using UART to the MVCU and WebSocket for wireless links, binary serialization with pre-allocated binary buffers and timestamps before serialization, and a small bounded buffer that drops old packets. Architecture enforces fail-predictably: n consecutive invalid readings trigger immediate physical braking, extensive failure injection shapes design, and logging plus replay tools diagnose timing and hardware faults.
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chapters (10)
- 0:00Real-time control software intro
- 5:01What is Vega Hyperloop
- 10:00Real-time vs fast software
- 15:11Designing reliable systems
- 20:29Real-time performance metrics
- 24:38Why browser UIs fail
- 29:55Programming language choice
- 33:05Real-time logging and testing
- 37:24Concurrency and buffer management
- 42:03Final lessons
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