Outreach focused cansat project - from design, development to data acquisition and display

• Main Author: Yeung, Mun Lok
• Other Authors: Shao Xuguang
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2017
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Electrical and electronic engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/71520
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

A CanSat is a scaled-down version of a real satellite that do not go into orbit but rather, deployed within the Earth’s atmosphere. Its mission can be carried out during its deployment and can range from collection and analysis of environmental data, image capturing of certain area etc. The low cost and simple design of CanSats offer students not only the opportunity to explore space engineering concepts and face challenges to apply what they have learnt into designing a practical application but also to inspire them to consider joining the STEM field. This project is split into 2 parts where the first focus will be on the design, development and deployment of CanSat Graphical User Interfaces for various projects and events including Outreach workshops. These interfaces are designed to be user-friendly and engaging to cater to the students that will be attending the workshops. The programs will also save all data and it will also be able to replay the telemetry data that was saved using the program. Although images can be captured by an Arduino CanSat, the microcontroller does not have the capability to process and analyse the images in real-time parallel to collection of telemetry data. Thus, the second part of this project will be to explore and consider alternatives to the current Outreach CanSat kits that uses the Arduino as the control and if additional features can be implemented without significant changes to the setup and deployment time. Comparisons will be done between this new alternative and the Arduino where factors include setup time, complexity of both hardware and software, and deployment duration.