Payload has been progressing well. The payload order was submitted and I am waiting to hear back what they think of my proposal.
My teammates Malique and Daniel are both doing well on their project ideas. As you can imagine balancing school and the aerospace activities takes full time commitment and we have been researching a lot before putting the money where our mouths are.
- Malique has been working on the GPS/Altimeter device and came up with a new way to record the rocket’s path and that was through tracking. Not quite as comprehensive as GPS, cheaper to do, and allows a more unique way to know where the rocket is going. Tracking is something he brought up with me that is closely related to what the robotics team is doing and seems to be a good mix of having ready made parts and building it yourself.
- Daniel is researching ways to record acceleration which has been easy to do, but most technologies try to factor out vibration with their recording instruments, so trying to find something to strictly record vibration has been hard to do. What it sounds like we would need to do is to set some accelerometer to a very high frequency and make it very sensitive to just small adjustments in movement. Still a working plan in progress though.
- On my side, I’ve submitted the paperwork and hope that my payload gets paid and shipped real soon. I’ve found a very affordable way online through the instructuables website to make a Go-Pro camera holder. To add weight it looks like we might have to add several Go-Pro’s. I’ve been meaning to talk about my adding weight payload ideas with things like a ballast but haven’t found a good forum to bring it up yet. It may be best till we have a payload module to see how best to add weight to it before launch.
As always, this is just a snapshot of what’s been happening so far. I’ll be sure to keep you posted more regularly. Till, next week.
“If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading”
– Lao Tzu