On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 2:38 PM, Bernard Davison
<address@hidden> wrote:
Yep standard civilian GPSs have been flown. They lose position of course at launch but do acquire solution after the main parachute opens.
Also the MEMS accelerometers have been flown and data logged.
The major problem we've always faced is knowing what went wrong when things don't work and the thing is buried 5m underground and the rocket has turned itself into metal confetti.
We've worked out what we believe Will be a survivable data storage module. Hopefully to be tested in the next year or so.
At the moment were breaking the Lisa/L board up into smaller components and designing them to be rugged. I.e. positive locking connectors isolation on some switches and comms. Etc.
We're also breaking the board into discrete task based "nodes" that can communicate via redundant CAN bus connectors. So in the future it would be possible to have a failure tolerant system. I.e. if you have a failure of a transceiver node, IMU node, flight computer node, CAN bus. Then it could use another node on the network.
Of course that would need the appropriate software to be written for that kind of control.
Cheers,
Bernie.