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The areas we need to tackle in the near future:
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1. Electronics/hardware:
Designing PCBs, soldering, assembling and testing them.
2. Firmware:
Writing code in C++ for Pyxida (the main flight computer) and CCB (Camera Controller Board), along with unit tests for them.
3. Kalman filter:
The sensor fusion algorithm. If you want to learn more about it, I recommend this video series.
Will involve lots of physics (fluids in particular) and linear algebra.
4. HOOTL
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Hardware Out Of The Loop Testing - a utility for running firmware on a non-embedded machine in a sandbox to verify correctness in simulated scenarios.
5. Groundstation:
Software in Python, used to monitor the rocket in flight. A lot of progress happened last year, so this is not on the critical path.
6. Integration:
In charge of integrating all the pieces of hardware on the rocket, including:
- Pyxida
- Camera board
- COTS altimeters
- Cameras
Also will focus on getting the cameras to work, with the new hardwired camera connections for power and feedback.
7. Radio communication:
In charge of radio antenna and link testing, working with RF stuff. The most undefined for now, as we have very little RF expertise, os perhaps we would be reaching out to the MIT radio amateur clubWe do not have enough people to split into 7 groups and that would just make it more complicated, but there will be people appointed in charge of smaller things to keep things more organized and to help with new member training.
Recruiting
There are many goals on this list, and there are many more we could potentially start working on for the spaceshot, and we won't run out of tasks for a while, so any additional workforce couldn't hurt - it would just give us some extra manhours we could spend on extra features and increased reliability.
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