Friday, July 17, 2009

Blog!!!!

Im very dissapointed in myself, I hope im able to pass the test next week. i wont give up if i dont pass. I will make sure i have my license before i go to central. Cant wait for palestine

This sucks!!!!!!!!!!!!

I failed the test twice, i dont understand how everytime I take the practice exam I pass. What seems to be the problem. But on the other hand almost time for FRR, and I didnt realize that I have to get all these programs done to do testing before the document is due, because thats whats required in the FRR. Thanks GUZIK for making the scheduling so tight. Thats ok GUZIK it will be done today....

Friday, July 10, 2009

And the winner is?

Who is the winner of the blog? Is it me? Is it me? Do a runner up get a prize as well? I need to get my second prize dang cayla takin up all the winners spots.
And the winner is??????????????????????

Going back to Central!!!!

When we go back to school im going to be very excited about teaching new students, and trying to attract new students to learn about balloning. It really is a good learning experience. My favorite phrase that i willl annonce all the time is FIGURE IT OUT!!!!..... oh how many times i hear that phrase a day. I wonder what new experiment we will try to do. It seems its going to be alot of fun, maybe i can use the time circuit that I won from the last blog. That would be a good tool to use...

Everybody blog!!!!

EVERYBODY EVERYBODY EVERYBODY BLOG!!!!! everyone keep sayin make sure u blog today make sure u blog today. What's the big suprise? But anyway its so much to do in so little time. Constructing a CDR presentation, making sure our document was better than the last one, and our defense all less than a week from today. Our team is functioning much better than 2 weeks ago, much much team work. Hopefully today I can get started with the calibrations with Ashle but in the mean time I can go over what I have done so far and get a better understanding of the ground software. I know so far from the Basic Stamp Editor we will extract the data collected from the data EEPROM and extract it into a file using the program Term 232. From there we can put our data into an Microsoft excel file. But the data extracted is only temperature, pressure, and a time stamp. Our experiment is measuring temperature and pressure vs. altiutde, so where do we get the altitude from. Well the beacon on the payload will record altitude along with a time stamp in UTC time. a program will be given to us to retrieve the altitude data ( what a relief, I dont have to write that program). So then we can input the data into excell and make plots using science conversions.
Wow I just learned most of this this morning in a meeting, lol I didnt think my memory was that good.

Thursday, July 9, 2009

Getting ready for the CDR!!!

6.3 Flight Software Implementation and Verification
In order to implement the flight program, the Basic Stamp Editor programming language will be used. A main loop is needed in order to continuously record data and time stamps. Data from the temperature and pressure sensor will be read through the ADC channels. To read the sensors a subroutine for reading from the ADC has been implemented, as well as a subroutine for writing the data to the data EEPROM. A time stamp will also be written to the data EEPROM using the same subroutines. IF ELSE/ THEN statements have been created to check for memory space and free address availability. These checks will prevent the flight software from writing over any data in the case of a power failure. When memory is full, the program will stop writing to addresses and enter into an endless loop. In order to be certain that the software runs properly, we will, run the pre-flight, in-flight/ADC testing and post-flight programs. We will place the BalloonSat, while running the flight software, in conditions similar to what it will face in the troposphere, tropopause and lower stratosphere. Temperatures approaching -70oC and pressure approaching 4mb. If the flight program runs and produces reasonable data during vacuum, thermal, and shock test it will be approved for flight.


7.3 Data Acquisition and Analysis Plan
7.3.1 Ground Software
In order to appropriately retrieve the data that was collected by the flight software, the post-flight software will need to initialize the data EEPROM’s address to zero and read back the raw data from the memory The Basic Stamp Editor programming language must be used to run the post-flight software. The program Term 232 will be used to retrieve the data off the Basic Stamp programming editor to be further analyzed in Microsoft Excel. During flight the mini SD card inserted into the camera will have collected data as well. We will retrieve the mini SD card and insert it into a laptop containing a SD slot, retrieve the pictures and download them into windows movie maker.

7.3.2 Ground Software Implementation and Verification
In order to implement the ground software, the Basic Stamp Editor programming language will be used. A main loop is needed in order to continuously read data from the data EEPROM and format the data. IF/ELSE THEN statement will be implemented to check to see if any more addresses have been written to. This loop will continue until all filled addresses have been read. In order to be certain that software runs properly, we will first run the pre flight software to write “FF” to all the addresses, second we will run our flight/ADC testing program through vacuum, thermal, and shock test to collect data and write to the data EEPROM. Third we will run our post flight program to read back the data collected. We will then verify that we can take our data off the Basic Stamp editor and import it into the program Term 232 and plot the data into Microsoft Excel, once all these test are complete our ground software will be approved.

The new sections I have done in the CDR template... I started to get confused about the ground software. Am I going in the rite direction? Please comment!!!!

Friday, July 3, 2009

This week!!!!

This week we had the PDR review on wednesday. We actually stayed the nite in the lab to ensure that we met our deadline. I can honestly say that it was worth it since we didnt get such a bad crash like we did in the Pre PDR. Im very proud of both groups. Moving up to the Pre CDR, I must make such a detailed flowchart. What a headache? This programming isnt going to be so bad since this flowchart states all the specifics.. Good luck to both groups for next week!!!!