New electronic system

Since we won the 3rd award in "All you can fly" competition, which was held in Madrid in April 2010, we started thinking about how to improve the electronic system in order to reduce its dimensions and to increase its reliability. One of the failures we had was the lack of communication between our little satellite and us during the fall that made us lose it for some hours. Due to this, one of the ideas that came up to our minds for a future design was to implement a complete telemetry system inside our cansat. In addition, in order to make all the electronic assemble smaller we have attempted to put all the devices together in a printed circuit board.

Our current electronic system is formed by:

• Mbed prototyping platform


• GPS receiver


• Electronic compass


• 3 axes accelerometer


• 2 axes gyroscope


• Barometric and temperature sensor


• IR sensor


• Xbee wifi modulus

During the test stage we worked on a breadboard to ensure all the devices worked properly together. Meanwhile, we designed the printed circuit board using EAGLE software with the help of Daniel Pérez Robles from the Electronic Department of Terrassa's UPC campus which allowed us to print it with its PCB milling machine. Here are some pictures of the whole process

After that, we solded the SMD components and the other sensors. This is the actual look of the electronic system.

On the other hand, we are working to enable XP-7A DEST to communicate with the ground station in order to do a real-time tracking. We are going to use XBee wifi modulus with our own communication protocols and we will test the whole system in two weeks. These are some pictures of the communication devices.

XP-7A DEST

We have just finished the final structure design and just started the final CATIA design of the first model incorporating the direction.

This cansat is called XP-7A DEST which stands for Direction and Electronic System Testbed.

This cansat will be the first full-system testbed in the new generation series cansats. We are designing the assembly and resizing the direction elements in order to start the manufacturing.

Electronicaly this cansat will mount all the systems and the integrated circuit. We expect all systems to resist the initial rocket acceleration without problems.

Structuraly the cansat will incorporate a completely replaceable direction.

We expect this model to be flying in two weeks.

GPS tests

We have been performing GPS tests to analize the data it provides and to ensure the programe that we have created is working properly.

This is the result of the last test, the presicion is quite good. The track is not straight due to the building interferences, we expect the GPS receiver data to be more precise when operating in open spaces.