The Pegasus Mission has been very pleased with our ability to bidirectional communicate with a global audience during the 2 NAE runs.  Our device located behind the pilot’s left shoulder has been able to transmit telemetry and receive messages from users without flaw.  The run length is 10.5 miles and we anticipate a continuously connectivity.

The expensive and heavy satellite communications gear that we had hauled on a 15′ truck to the base camp is the lifeline to the Internet.  It’s capabilities allow us to bridge networks and communicate directly with Piraeus, our real-time technology in Microsoft Azure. Piraeus also allows our global audience to seamlessly connect with the apps and have a personal real-time experience as NAE makes it run across the desert floor.

Simplicity is the key.  Build an app, securely connected it to Piraeus, and experience a real-time adventure in high speed racing and exploration from a location without native connectivity.

Architecture
The Pegasus device is onboard the NAE and communicates across the local NAE network using static IPs between the device and field gateway.  Our choice of UDP as a channel for communications has well worked well and both field gateway and device can communicate with each other rapidly.  The field gateway is tethered to a Android phone that is connected to our satellite communications network.  The field gateway makes a Web socket connection to Piraeus and uses CoAP protocol for bidirectional communications with resources.  The user apps (Web + Mobile) also use a Web socket and CoAP for communications to Piraeus.  This configuration allows the user app to see the telemetry directly from the NAE is a few milliseconds from when it is generated by the device.  The users can also send messages to the device, which is displayed inside the cockpit and recorded on a GoPro camera.  Effectively, the users become a participant in the event as NAE makes it run.

Purpose
North American Eagle is certainly an extreme real-world condition, but it also allows us to test, learn, and imagine new possibilities with devices, communications, and the Microsoft Cloud…in real-time.  The applicability of what the Pegasus Mission has accomplished with our partnership with North American Eagle will yield real-world and tested examples of how IoT can be used in simple or challenging commercial environments and bring the meaning of real-time to a  global scale.

Our mission is to challenge the assumptions of what is possible and what success we may have whether at 21 miles in the upper atmosphere or 700 mph or land, fuels the imagination of the possibilities.  If you “Dare Mighty Things”,  you may inspire others to use their imaginations to change the world.

Dare Mighty Things !!!