Fall 2019
The first 2 weeks, we spent time to gather infomation related to the scope of the project from our ESRA Rocketry team.Then we met with the client for engineering requirements and team requirements. After that we divided work load into area of experties such as PCB design and RF communication. In parallel, our team started researching in avionic components, learnt more about rocketry, and worked on prototype board. Our team met up with last year avionic team and professional engineers. By week 5, we had a rough draft on the system with type of sensors and MCU, operating frequency and started the development of firmware. BOM and manufacturing of flight computer rev1 were finished during week 6. We used flight computer rev1 at first static test fire to measure the pressure from motor tube to help propulsion team better characterize their propelant.
Winter 2020
We came back from the break with flight computer version 2 design with change in design and components. We started manufacturing our flight computer ver2.0 10 days after. After all the documentations, verifications, system checkoffs, fiming, we were able to use our flight computers for the second full scale static test fire and intergration test week 8. Range test was conducted on week 8. In paralell, we started the development of safety arming switch circuit, basestation rev1 and pressure transducer subsystem. Week 9, we had the flight computers, saferty arming switch, pressture transducer subsystem, basestation rev1 ready for first flight test.
Spring 2020
Corona virus hit the U.S. We collaborated remote on research and documentation. Week 5, we made second base station with improvement in portability. We also worked on team video as a fun project. We made plan on meeting to check all the avionic before first flight test in June.
Results
All the avionics function properly and ready to be tested at first flight. All documentation related to competition have been submitted.
Takeaways
Our team made a strong foudation on hardware with detail documentation. Next year team can use or referencing our design and spend more time focus on firmware side.