At long last the CrawSat 3 project has completed the development phase, which included making a board, coding up sensors, gps, a communications system, a user interface package to be added to the board, and the integration. It took a long time, but its finally completely done.

We’re now entering the testing phase, with a Code Assurance Test this Wednesday at 6:30 PM in the CAPE Lab. Everyone interested may come join!

Well its been a while since the last time we gave a status update on the CrawSat 3 development, formerly called Balloon 3, and i’m pretty excited to say we’ve made a lot of progress!

First off, after many long hours in the lab (and some very stressful late nights), I can happily say the code integration is finally showing some great progress. Currently our code is capable of the following:

- displaying gps data (coordinates, altitude, time, and number of satellites connected)
- real time clock (used to keep a running tally on the duration of the flight)
- watch dog time (incase something begins locking up power can be reset, hopefully it won’t be needed!)
- displaying internal and external temperatures to the balloon package
- giving pressure readings
- giving voltage readings on our batteries.
- three cameras able to take up to 20 photos per camera by command from ground (indivisually and all together)
- comm able to transmit successful beacons to ground and receive commands to set a new interval for the beacon to be sent down (choices being 15, 10 and 5 seconds)

(Photo of Ethan working on the camera code)

We’re still working on the integration of a current reading from the onboard fuel gauge, sending commands from ground to trigger a cut down mechanism and another to toggle a siren, and final testing of the cameras. Hoping to get that going soon.

Secondly the structure that will house the electronics is pretty much ready for flight day, minus the final sealing. Below are some photos of the structure:

The structure before being populated,

and after of the entire package. On top you can see a siren and switch to power the electronics.

A close up on our power switch, i’m actually pretty excited that theres a cover for the switch, kind of like in those movies where theres a switch or button behind a glass box.

Close up on the siren mounted on the top of the structure.

View of the inside. Pictured: a placeholder board while the actual board is being used for testing, two of the three cameras secured in their slots aimed out holes fashioned on the side of the box sealed by Plexiglas.

One of the battery holders inside the box.

and here we have the board itself, with the gps unit on the side.

The three cameras outside being tested during the integration process, photos from the test below:

this is a photo we took of one of the CAPE-1 models in the lab from one of the cameras during testing.

Another photo of Casey one of the coders of the GPS subsystem.

and one more of myself, and Chase in the background.

The next photo is actually a compilation of 9 or 10 photos taken by a camera inside the structure to test how the photos looked from behind Plexiglas as the box slowly fell from the table….don’t worry everything is still ok. Nothing broke!

the quality of the photos behind the Plexiglas doesn’t seem too bad.

After this is all done, we’ll be entering an intensive testing period to ensure everything works fine. Launch Date hasn’t been decided yet, as a time table for the testing period hasn’t been determined just yet. So keep an eye out for an update with a launch date and more updates!

While checking out some of the videos from the 2010 Cubesat Workshop, I stumbled across a full video of our Lead Mechanical Engineer, Abhishek Bajpayee’s presentation to the Cubesat community on our plans for solar deployable panels and the mechanical challenges of our project. I’d like to congratulate Abhishek on a job well done!

Also special thanks to the Cubesat Workshop for posting videos of all the presentations! For other presentations from this year’s Conference go here:
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/CubeSatWorkshop/v3

Below is the video:

Well its been a long time since we last updated our readers on the progress of Balloon 3. Its been pretty exciting for our team lately.

We recently got our board in for Balloon 3, and are in the process of populating it with pieces.

The OBC has integrated Sensors into the main code, and is currently setting it’s eyes on getting comm and gps done soon.

Below is a screen of hyper terminal recieving the Balloon 3 Beacon with data from the temperature and fuel gauge sensors. The pressure sensor is also integrated, but the sensors board can’t support that particular sensor, so the data from pressure is invalid….but hey its progress right?

We’re hoping to set a firm launch date at tomorrow’s meeting.  So stay tuned!

I have posted several eagle cad libraries which I have either created myself or customized for the CAPE team and other projects. I will be keeping the files at Eagle Cad Libraries. I will have an index page up by March 15, 2010, listing all of the files and a short description of each file.