Flight Data Recorder

As a whole, our project works in three parts:

  1. PIC, which reads data from the GPS and sends that data, along with commands, to the Arduino.
  2. The Arduino then takes the data, including the commands, and performs a myriad of functions. These functions include storing the GPS data, reading the light sensor and storing its data, reading the temperature sensor and storing its data, and sending the most recent GPS data to the Raspberry Pi. These all happen at different, but constant intervals.
  3. The Raspberry Pi is running a webserver with PHP. The Raspberry Pi has a long range WiFi adapter that is connected to a network. The webserver contains two main files. The first is an HTML page that has a Google Earth plugin that loads data about every five seconds from a PHP file and adds that GPS data to the plugin. The second is the PHP file. This file waits for serial data, reads it, and makes sure it has received all the appropriate data. Then, it converts the coordinates into a KML document, which is Google’s verison of XML that is used to plot points on Google Earth. The user may access this plugin and have data loaded dynamically by simply connecting to the same network as the Raspberry Pi and entering its IP address into a web browser.
Bonus Project

Grade:

  1. Scope -- how broad is the project?
  2. Functionality -- does it work? How well?
  3. Hardware complexity
  4. Software complexity
  5. Presentation
  6. Practicality / usefulness / fun factor