Joey R2 Stencils
The stainless steel stencils manufactured by Hackvana arrived today. Parts will be ordered soon ready for getting at least one board manufactured and running in the coming week. Some pictures of the stencil:
Nova
Joey R2 PCBs
The PCBs for the second revision of the Joey-M flight computer have arrived from Cambridge Circuit company. This revision carries some minor fixes from the first as well as the addition of the new CUSF logo to the rear silkscreen. Thanks once again to Cambridge Circuit Company for these fantastic boards.
NOVA21 and NOVA22
On Wednesday 28th March, we flew NOVA21 and NOVA22. NOVA21 NOVA21 went up at around 1330BST carrying JOEY-M, Squirrel (the Android project) and a special guest. It got to 27.2km altitude before burst, landing near Braintree. The flight was mostly a test of the new Joey and Squirrel flight code. Joey performed well, though there was …
T-Rex In Space!
NOVA21 had a special guest on board the flight: Wee Rex from Dinosaur Comics! He’s an adorable fluffy squishy stuffed T-Rex. We mounted him on a couple of sticks of balsa wood to the payload containing JOEY-M and the cameras: Then we sent him up, getting a ton of good photos: He got to approximately …
Nova 20 launch with Wombat and Squirrel
Last weekend saw the 20th launch in the CUSF Nova balloon project, carrying two payloads – the experimental Wombat flight computer, and the Squirrel Android flight computer. We also used for the first time the excellent F-203AV mass flow controller (kindly on loan from Bronkhorst who support CU Spaceflight) for regulating the helium filling of …
Wombat Flight Computer
Work has been progressing recently on the Wombat flight computer. While the original designs had been started well back in October, a few weeks ago we restarted the schematics with a view to a much more capable payload. The schematics started coming together on the 18th Feb, and within a week were all finished and …
Nova 19 Recovered
After four months in a tree in Exning, the Nova 19 payloads (Squirrel and Weasel) have been recovered thanks to the help of some local tree surgeons. The Weasel payload with its Canon A560 camera took some stunning photographs. See all of the Nova 19 images on Flickr. The Squirrel Nexus One smartphone was also …
Micrel Prototype Radio
One of the current projects is to build a radio module to be a replacement for the excellent, but large and expensive, Radiometrix NTX2. A first prototype uses the Micrel MICRF112 10mW FSK transmitter with a varactor controlled crystal pulling arrangement. An onboard variable capacitor also allows tuning of the centre frequency to anywhere in …
Nova 19 – Another CUSF Altitude Record
Nova 19, the 19th official Cambridge University Spaceflight payload was launched today from Churchill College. Filling was impeded due to very high winds and heavy rain showers, but eventually the payload carrying the Squirrel Nexus One smartphone and the Arduino tracker was in the air. After beating the UK altitude record for high altitude balloons …
Nova 18 Launch
Today saw the launch of Nova 18, carrying the Squirrel smartphone and the Ferret Arduino tracker. Ferret has had some bugfixes since its last flight and seemed to perform much better this time. The Squirrel smartphone was running a custom app called SquirrelPhoto enabling it to take pictures at set intervals. Unfortunately the software crashed …