PServer enhancements

[aexzhou]

• Simulate bad/corrupt data being sent (extreme/illegal outliers in data, corrupt key)
• Simulate transmission lag (suddenly, the stream pauses for a second)
• Investigating ways to introduce constrained randomness to the corruption/lag (disturbances, perturbations)

[kennethmanohar]

I submitted a pull request for a branch that simulates corrupt data - I will now look into transmission lag and constrained randomness

Also added a corruption type where the value is missing, let me know if this is a good idea, if not I can remove it.

[aexzhou]

Linking to PR #48

[natenog]

Currently, tools/pserver/pstream_json.py adds variation to each JSON object's data value with an internal counter (self.counter).

We can replace this variable with a seeded RNG to maintain its deterministic behaviour while adding more possible random configurations. This also allows for extended verification with random seeds and relevant bugfixes for errors that stem from specific seeds.

Hi @kennethmanohar, can you implement this update please? Please reach out if you have any questions.

[kennethmanohar]

Hey Nate, Sorry for the late reply. Yes, I'll make this update and let you know. Thanks for checking in! Kind regards, Ken

…

On Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 4:44 p.m. Nate Noguera ***@***.***> wrote: *natenog* left a comment (UBC-OpenRobotics/panorama#39) <#39 (comment)> Currently, tools/pserver/pstream_json.py adds variation to each JSON object's data value with an internal counter (self.counter). image.png (view on web) <https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/400a9b3d-0610-46b3-8e1f-0e9157d752f6> We can replace this variable with a seeded RNG to maintain its deterministic behaviour while adding more possible random configurations. This also allows for extended verification with random seeds and relevant bugfixes for errors that stem from specific seeds. Hi @kennethmanohar <https://github.com/kennethmanohar>, can you implement this update please? Please reach out if you have any questions. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#39 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/BSBDTXDQH5QAYNVUHJGC6WD4QXOFJAVCNFSM6AAAAACTRTNXDWVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHM2DANRRGU4DINRXGA> . You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[natenog]

Before merging PR #59, there are a few things that can be added/modified.

We can add a "-seed" flag to scripts/run.sh that lets the user assign a seed for the RNG. For example, the shorthand command inputted to the terminal would be run -noesp -seed 5. If no seed is specified, run.sh will use a default seed of 1. The seed is then passed as a parameter to the PStreamJSON class initialization in pserver.py and used as the argument to random.seed() inside PStreamJSON.get_next_data().

We're also considering removing the "sequence" field from the JSON data, so we can also probably remove self.counter from the PStreamJSON class.