Miguel Ambriz Aerospace Engineering Week Four

Week four was a lot of troubleshooting. Firstly, the 31st, we decided to head to the lab. Waiting for everything to set up, I observed another intern (who was much older than I) doing some other radio testing. Essentially, his computer was sending a modulation called QPSK to a radio that runs the bits sent (bits are packets of data), which then transmits to itself to test that it actually works. The real purpose would be so the data is readable by the computer. The testing portion is dependent on a certain led lighting, where then a joke was made, “You know you’re doing engineering work if you’re trying to light an led.”

Computer that sends the module.

This is the big battery that powers everything! We use it in our own testing so I thought we’d mention it.

This the radio that loops the data (as you can see, the cable connects back into the machine).

Moving on, with Hydra essentially complete, we decided to get started on some EPS testing! But, a number of problems began to come our way. Firstly, the program still wasn’t reading the COM ports, giving us the error same error from last week. Bennett, who was Cooper’s mentor, was there to help out. We went into the computer to rename the USB port for the program to be able to find it, and it fixed the problem. Unfortunately,  absolutely nothing showed up onto the sensor data within the program when we hooked up to the sensors.

The Sensor data only shows up as question marks.

We tried downloading our version of Hydra onto the lab computer, but we still didn’t get the data we wanted. The most unfortunate part would be that a bunch of the graduates are going to a Small Sat Convention with MAXWELL and if we want our version of Hydra to be used, we’d have to have it emailed by Sunday night.  We had a video call with Andrew to try and figure out the problem. We hypothesize That there are problems in both CDH and Hydra, specifically in the communication files. CDH itself could also be sending something to Hydra that no longer exists, so we would have to check the packet structure headers.

Back in the lab, we noticed that there was a command for a never-ending loop of turning on Spacecraft mode in the program, therefore no letting it continue in its functions. Aidan managed to find the command and end it. Then, a number of brand new errors showed up.

The continuous loop of Spacecraft Mode.

The new errors (which I can’t show because I forgot to take a picture), revealed a whole new file that still had QB50 labels. We tracked down the file, renamed the labels, and… there was yet again a another file with multiple QB50 labels. We fixed that one too and finally had this error:

We aren’t exactly sure what to do to fix it, and are currently stuck. So, we will be calling Andrew yet again on Monday to problem solve. We are pretty bummed that we couldn’t meet the deadline, but are determined to track the problem and get the program officially done!

While Quinn surely had the snazziest costume, the entire cast did a terrific job acting and singing!

Jess, Aidan and I also had the pleasure of going to Elitch Gardens for the day and having some fun.

We had a hard time trying all the rides with the multiple lightning warnings, but certainly got on the best ones (even if I did feel a little woozy after the harder rides).