Our Works
Mechanical
The Mechanical subteam is responsible for the design, analysis, manufacturing, and assembly of the CanSat structural and deployment systems. The team develops the payload-container release mechanism, paraglider deployment mechanism, egg protection system, and internal mounting structures while ensuring compliance with all competition dimensional and mass requirements. Mechanical members perform structural, shock, and descent-related calculations to verify the system can survive launch, deployment, and landing conditions. In addition, the Mechanical Team collaborates closely with the electrical and software teams to ensure proper integration of sensors, electronics, and deployment controls throughout the mission.
Electrical
The electrical subteam was responsible for designing and manufacturing the avionics printed circuit board (PCB). Our PCB connects an array of sensors, GPS, cameras, and radio to the main microcontroller (STM32) and relevant power components, such as buck/boost converters. We began the year by outlining the competition requirements and performing trade studies to decide which components would be suitable. Then, we designed the PCB throughout the year, creating two iterations in total with improved EMI performance and small mechanical improvements along the way. Our first revision was hand soldered to reduce costs and provide SMD soldering experience, while our second revision came pre-soldered for the sake of time and professional quality. Finally, we conducted numerous drop tests by integrating with the other subteams to prove our system's robustness, and to fix any standout issues before competition.
Controls
The Controls subteam wrote the software for the STM32 flight computer and designed a custom "book-like" ground station to comminucate with the CanSat. The flight software implements a PID paraglider control algorithm that uses 2 servos to pull on the strings of the paraglider to steer it towards the landing coordinates. The ground station, run on a RaspberryPi, communicates with the CanSat using an Xbee radio device. It has buttons and switches to send commands, such as "Eject Paraglider" or "Activate Simulation Mode". It also has LED's, a servo, and a screen to graph data and indicate the CanSat state.
