Docker

A sequel to the first STM32H750 tracker post. After the C++ port was proven in production, I spent a week of evenings cutting dead vendor code, splitting the algorithm out to host for unit tests, wiring the LCD SPI through DMA to let the CPU run the tracker in parallel with the blit, unlocking the camera’s real frame rate, chasing a subtle BB-drift bug back to a too-wide SAD search, and finally building an offline A/B harness that compares SAD, NCC, and MOSSE on four synthetic scenarios so the next tracker port is a data decision, not a vibes one.

A long, honest retrospective on turning a WeAct STM32H750 board, a cheap OV7725 IR camera, and an Xbox controller into a live template-matching tracker. Every dead end, every wrong assumption, every fix — and what I’d do differently next time.

We spent a full session systematically profiling O3DE’s multi-camera streaming pipeline, testing eight different optimization approaches, and pinpointed the exact bottleneck: 18 ms of fixed overhead in the AttachmentReadback scope system. Here’s what we tried, what we measured, and what it means for the engine.

After O3DE’s 18 ms frame-graph readback made 30 FPS streaming impossible, we tried Godot. It got us there — eventually. This is the full path from 105 FPS on nothing to 50 FPS per camera with three live RTP streams, including every wrong turn and every underdocumented Godot behavior we hit on the way.

Exploring whether O3DE can replace Unity as the render engine for a drone simulation that streams multiple 1080p camera feeds via GStreamer. From first scaffold to three live RenderToTexture pipelines in a single session.

Getting PX4’s Simulation-In-Hardware (SIH) module running on a production flight controller — discovering the firmware doesn’t include SIH, building a custom PX4 with flash-trimming, fan-out routing serial MAVLink to both the simulator and ground station, and connecting it all to the Unity visualization pipeline.

How I replaced a proprietary terrain bundle with a fully procedural environment generated from open-source data — hundreds of buildings with window textures from OpenStreetMap, terrain-hugging roads, satellite-driven vegetation, and multiple ground and air entities — all built at runtime in a headless Unity Docker simulation.

How to script PX4 hardware verification using pymavlink’s SERIAL_CONTROL protocol over a USB connection — download CI firmware, flash from the command line, and run NSH commands programmatically. No QGroundControl required.

A practical guide to finding, downloading, and fusing satellite imagery and elevation data for an air-gapped Unity simulation. Covers every free tile provider (ESRI, Bing, Google), every free DTM source (SRTM, Copernicus, Mapzen), how to stitch thousands of tiles into Unity-ready textures, and the dead ends along the way.

A detailed technical walkthrough of profiling and optimizing a headless Unity simulation from 21 to 25 FPS — covering NVENC GPU encoding, batch camera rendering, GPU instancing, static batching, and the failed URP migration. Every measurement, every dead end, every lesson.