Project update
Rocket Tracks Tacking
- Talked with the SightLine folks
- Still willing to donate a system for rocket tracks! Think they can nail the tracking.
- Old ATV video not real helpful (too much airframe and RC fins in the way)
- Horizon cam probably better for horizon tracking (i.e., pitch, yaw)
- Can use wide angle + zoomed cameras and hand off between them
- Thermal IR sounds like a good idea too.. maybe they have one? :)
- Bob's RF tracking
- 4 helical antennas to do monopulse tracking on 2.4 GHz ATV signal
- Make our own combiner on the EPL PCB router
- Test on Dan's helicopter with ATV
- Demod outputs digitized by local microcontroller, then what? Local PID, or off to a PC?
- Worried about backlash on the chain
Capstone updates
- Fall/winter CS capstone
- Working on FC software infrastructure
- May need hardware to test their system soon
- Winter/Spring ECE capstone
- Working on power distribution + data distribution + battery charger board
- Waiting on avionics team technology decisions
AV3 Technology Change
- We're deciding to slowly move to the STM32F4xx family of microcontrollers. Possibly we should have done this quite a while ago :)
- We ordered some STM32F407 dev boards with Ethernet from Olimex which should arrive later this week.
- Hope to have an end-to-end Ethernet technology test with latency numbers by January 8th.
2013 Schedule
Next meeting is January 8th, 2013. That includes a 6pm intro meeting. We have enough funding to do at least two launches in 2013:
- Late spring/early summer launch in Bend
- Goal: planned first flight of AV3 + roll control
- Late fall launch in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada
- Goal: Probably improved AV3 + roll control, possibly first 6DOF?