Bi-weekly Update (Patreon)

Hello - it's been a bit too long! 20 days since the last update and many things have moved forward.

The Signal flight computer(formerly the Vector flight computer) has been assembled, tested, and I got most of the PCB design correct! The board has a few spacing issues between components, and could likely benefit from a bit more backfeed protection, in case of user error in hooking up a power supply. For now, I'll continue to use the current build as flight hardware, though I would like to send out a new revision for fabrication in a week or so. 

The board should theoretically be capable of flash based data-logging, though I've had trouble getting the processor and flash unit to reliably talk to each other. Additionally, as the flight software gets more complex, I'm considering building a simple desktop application to program the Signal computer instead of interfacing with it by serial commands through a terminal. Most of this work is still at least a month away, but always good to be thinking ahead.

To test the Signal computer and software, I built a simple rocket called Dart, which features four controlled canards at the top of the vehicle. Last Friday I tested the build in a wind tunnel at MIT and found that the rocket, and software need more work before a test flight. On the rocket end, having the fins so far forward of the CG(center of gravity) means the fins have very limited control over the vehicle, and would have to have crazy fast response time to effectively keep things stable. For the next revision, I'll shift the fins much closer to the CG, and test again!

On the software end, I have work to do with state estimation. Simply put, I'll need to combine a few sensor readings and filter them together to get more accurate outputs for altitude on the vehicle - There's also a bit of roll control code that needs updating. I don't anticipate writing the code for these things to be very hard, but I've been wrong before, so we'll see!

Lastly, my friend Charlie has been recommending I build a rocket to get my NAR L1 certification for about a year now, and I'll finally be doing that this week! I have almost all the parts needed to assemble the rocket, and will likely launch it next Saturday in Maine on an H motor. Most of this week I'll be out of town, so the build will be fairly simple. 

I'll aim to post more regularly here, my apologies for missing a week. That's all for now!