CAPE-2
ULL Preview Day Spring 2012
by Rizwan Merchant on Feb.27, 2012, under CAPE-2, General CAPE
This past weekend CAPE presented it’s project at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette’s Preview Day for prospective highschool students. Below are some photos.
- Team up bright and early at 9:00 am on a Saturday morning ready to present!
- Students from local highschools listening to the presentation.
- The Software Defined Radio team presenting their project under CAPE
Completed Core Rapid Protocol CAPE-2 Frame
by Rizwan Merchant on Jan.30, 2012, under CAPE-2
Recently the Integration Team completed a frame of the CAPE-2 Core design. Attached are photos of the boards soldered on to the frame.
- Alex Wehmann soldering the connectors for the backplane, after having tacked the corner pins in place to ensure proper orientation.
- Checking alignment with all the boards and the prototype battery holder after installing them in the prototype frame.
Long Time No Update
by Rizwan Merchant on Sep.10, 2011, under CAPE-2, CrawSat IV
Greetings All,
I hope everyone had a great summer. While most college students were down at the beach, the CAPE team was hard at work this past summer, making strides towards completion of the CAPE-2 Satellite Project. We’ve made a lot of changes, even going as far as to redefine our Command and Data Handling Subsystem from the ground up, while Communications, Power, and the Software Defined Radio Subsystems continued development. While on the side, myself and Louis Courville spent six weeks teaching classes to highschool students enrolled in the ULL Upward Bound Program in Programming Arduinos and Website Development as part of our continual Educational Outreach here at CAPE.
Now with the semester underway at UL, our team has redoubled efforts to complete flight hardware for the satellite by the end of the year, and a new team of students has taken on the task of developing and flying CrawSat IV.
So look forward for more exciting updates from us!
CAPE-2: Testing Deployable Panels
by Rizwan Merchant on Mar.21, 2011, under CAPE-2
Quick test video of how our deployable solar panels will function. We wrapped fishing string around the structure of the satellite, and burned through it with a current of nichrome from the power supply shown in video. End result solar panels deploying! Totally awesome progress! ![]()
CAPE-2: Prototype Updates
by Rizwan Merchant on Mar.19, 2011, under CAPE-2
The last few weeks in the lab have been pretty busy with some pretty exciting progress for our satellite team.
First off the Communications Subsystem has their first prototype board in, and are busy testing it and gearing up to write the flight code soon.
- photo of the Communications Subsystem prototype board fully populated
In other news our Mechanical Subsystem has been working on attaching the hinges to our demo satellite structure with deployable panels. Gotta say it looks pretty cool!
- the structure with all the deployables attached with working hinges.
- Another view of the structure.









