Meeting Notes August 15, 2001

In attendance: Bart, Nathan, Jamey, Andrew, Larry, Dennis.

Antennas

Found out that the U of NM makes cylindrical patch antennas for large sounding rockets.
Could possibly use a cylindrical patch antenna... but some problems with that (see the antennas page).

Ground Control:

Jamey has finished as much of the launch control software as he can: just the link to the VCR (see next point) and the "Tminu5" signal to the rocket remain.
We decided to use some simple digital logic to interface a cheap "learning" VCR remote control to the Launch Computer. Andrew will help Jamey design and build the Parallel Port -> Remote control adapter... probably using a 4066 and a D flip flop.

Flight Computer:

CAN Nodes:

Found a brand new 68HC11-like microcontroller for the CAN nodes! It's the MC9S12DP256 - a 68HC12 (which is a 16bit 68HC11) with 256k FLASH, 32K RAM, CAN, timers, ADCs, etc!! Of course - it's brand new and they're out of samples so we can't get it until January. Surprise!
Which brings us to: We're officially going with the PIC16F877 w/ SJA1000 solution. The first generation PCB is done, I'll do another rev next week, and the damn thing will be done.

To do:

Larry will write up all of the meetings he should have already and work on getting that FCC waiver.
Andrew will look at the TAPR digital radio stuff, check on meeting space w/ Don, contact RJ to see if he could call around for help antennas (like Tek) and try and buy ATV equipment. He'll also formalize the CAN messages and attempt to have a Real Life(tm) at the same time.
Nathan will be looking into C mount lenses for the camera.
James, Jamey and Larry should be thinking about the Flight Computer software since it's 6 weeks to launch but 2 weeks until we should theoretically do a code freeze! So that means starting to code some software on our RTLinux PC's we set up... and maybe mocing up the CAN bus using LV1b's flight data.

-- AndrewGreenberg - 15 Aug 2001