St. Louis Arch

The arch in St. Louis is welded stainless steel. I took this photo of it after my trip to the top. The ride to the top is inside a space age capsule that holds five. At 630 feet tall, I calculate I could see 30 miles to the horizon.

DALPro

DALPro is a physicaly small shop, but they sell around the world. The original company was called Kepro, after the owner. They went out of business in 2004 and D and L took over. A Kepro board was used onboard the first space shuttle launch. I'll have to find out where. It's it amazing that the PCB materials you can purchase today for your projects was good enough for a manned space launc in 1981?

Printed Circuit Board

I begin the process of making printed circuit boards (PCBs) by using a programm called Ares Lite. The file is printed as a copper mask and transferred to a presensitized sheet of copper clad. The copper clad is manufactured by a company named DALPro and they're based in St. Louis. This weekend I'll get a chance to pay them a visit and I'll post my impressions.

The product is great, I encourage everyone to try it out.

Smart Proxmity Detector

I'm soldering a smart proxmity detector PCB. It uses a PICAXE-08 and will communicate with the robot it is attached to. The idea is that its PICAXE flashes two IR LEDs in sequence and looks for a sign of a reflection from the 40 kHz IR detector. The result is sent to the robot controller as a serial message. The PICAXE can operate the IR LEDs at a range of frequencies, allowing the proximity detector to estimate distances to obstacles. Since there are two IR LEDs, the proximity detector determines whether the obstacle is on the left, right, or both sides.

NearSys Ultralight flight computer

I'm still plugging away at soldering the new flight computer together. It uses an I2C memory chip to store data in EEPROM. A MicroTrak 300 is the onboard transmitter. The goal is an affordable solder kit to help new groups get near spaceborne.

New Flight Computer

I just received a new flight computer PCB. This one uses a PICAXE-28X and reads GPS data in background. Its built-in radio is a 144.390 MHz transmitter by Lemos. The pads for the antenna connector are good but for one. I'll drill it out for this test, but will modify it for the production boards.

New Flight