SEDSAT-2 Ground Design Review 20080405
From SEDSWiki
Contents
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Communications Subsystem Design Review II Notes
The design review will be held during the Communications Design Review, at 1300GMT on Yahoo! IM.
What will be covered
- Design Choices made(and the rationale for these).
- Interfaces for your subsystem(INPUTS and OUTPUTS for your subsystem).
- Preliminary mass and subsystem dimensions
- Preliminary power consumption figures
- Subsystem progress since Design Review 2
- Critical issues(Problems encountered or that need to be resolved)
- Timeframe for completion of subsystem
- Financial situation
Notes
Design choices made
A number of the design choices for the ground station are fixed by what the communications subsystem decides - things such as: modulation, protocols, frequencies etc... The following are the ground-specific decisions:
Ground implementation architecture
A soft-ground station will be implemented, using a laptop PC.
Discussions
A software ground station is simple to implement and it can provide optimal performance (ie. it is not limited by any physical circuit parameters). Further, software is more conductive to distributed development than hardware, so will map better to the SEDSAT-2 environment.
Ground control interface
A web control interface will be provided.
Discussion
The ubiquity of a web interface suggests that it is the most appropriate control method for the global/distributed SEDSAT-2 team.
Interfaces for the subsystem
Preliminary mass and subsystem dimensions
Size: Huge. Weight: Heavy.
Preliminary power consumption figures
Power: Lots.
Subsystem progress since Design Review
- A ground station architecture has been developed
- A team has been recruited
- Work is beginning
Critical Issues
Ground has a wide range of required skills. The team is currently well represented at the mechanical end of the spectrum, with some knowledge surrounding electronics in general, and some specific knowledge of control engineering, but the team is missing software experience. The team needs to recruit at least one person, possibly two, with experience in this are. The two roles that need filled are:
- Software developer with experience of low-level library/OS network protocol development. C experience would be a bonus, but sufficient experience with other languages (C++/Java) would be OK too.
- Web developer with HTML/AJAX knowledge, and knowledge of some scripting languages (eg. PHP/Perl/Ruby)
Timeframe for completion
TBD
Financial situation
No funding yet, intending to rely on team contributions for parts.
