CAPE

Completed Core Rapid Protocol CAPE-2 Frame

Rizwan Merchant — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 18:09:36 +0000

Recently the Integration Team completed a frame of the CAPE-2 Core design. Attached are photos of the boards soldered on to the frame.

- Alex Wehmann soldering the connectors for the backplane, after having tacked the corner pins in place to ensure proper orientation.

- Checking alignment with all the boards and the prototype battery holder after installing them in the prototype frame.

New Lecture Videos On Youtube Channel

Rizwan Merchant — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 18:28:10 +0000

Greetings everyone, just a quick update. CAPE Mentor Nick Pugh has uploaded four really valuable videos explaining the concepts of Decibels, Free Space Loss, Noise and Batteries. Below are videos of his lectures on the concepts. Hope everyone enjoys!

Lecture on Decibels:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryLnFYFxJAw

Lecture on Free Space Loss:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrGNuC6-u-0

Lecture on Noise:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0E1X491rw0

Lecture on Batteries:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=V67aIir_mG8

Long Time No Update

Rizwan Merchant — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 22:39:09 +0000

Greetings All,

I hope everyone had a great summer. While most college students were down at the beach, the CAPE team was hard at work this past summer, making strides towards completion of the CAPE-2 Satellite Project. We’ve made a lot of changes, even going as far as to redefine our Command and Data Handling Subsystem from the ground up, while Communications, Power, and the Software Defined Radio Subsystems continued development. While on the side, myself and Louis Courville spent six weeks teaching classes to highschool students enrolled in the ULL Upward Bound Program in Programming Arduinos and Website Development as part of our continual Educational Outreach here at CAPE.

Students learning about programming Arduino Microcontrollers over the summer

Now with the semester underway at UL, our team has redoubled efforts to complete flight hardware for the satellite by the end of the year, and a new team of students has taken on the task of developing and flying CrawSat IV.

Group Photo of CAPE-2 Team and CrawSat IV Team

So look forward for more exciting updates from us!

C.A.P.E. at ULL Engineering Day 2011

Rizwan Merchant — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 18:49:00 +0000

On March 30th, 2011, the University of Louisiana at Lafayette College of Engineering opened it’s doors to prospective highschool students considering joining the University, and as always CAPE was present talking to the students about the program and experiences gained on the team and at the University at large. Hopefully we inspired a lot of students to consider ULL their choice for college!

Full Gallery: http://gallery.ulcape.org/v/Outreach/engineeringday2011/

Special thanks to Ashley Isabelle Photography for coming out and taking photos of the day for us! Check out her website for more information on future shoots. http://www.ashleytakesphotos.com/

CAPE Presents at ULS Research Day

Rizwan Merchant — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 21:41:03 +0000

Recently Chase Savoy attended the First Annual University of Louisiana Systems Undergraduate Research Day to present the research done by our team. Over 60 students from all eight UL System universities participated. CAPE hopes to return in future years to present our developments.

Featured: University of Louisiana at Lafayette presenters – Molly Dugas, Ariane Martin, Manik Rajora and Chase Savoy

CAPE-2: Testing Deployable Panels

Rizwan Merchant — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 01:41:01 +0000

Quick test video of how our deployable solar panels will function. We wrapped fishing string around the structure of the satellite, and burned through it with a current of nichrome from the power supply shown in video. End result solar panels deploying! Totally awesome progress!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-xp5OwdVZM

CAPE-2: Prototype Updates

Rizwan Merchant — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 18:11:12 +0000

The last few weeks in the lab have been pretty busy with some pretty exciting progress for our satellite team.

First off the Communications Subsystem has their first prototype board in, and are busy testing it and gearing up to write the flight code soon.

- photo of the Communications Subsystem prototype board fully populated

In other news our Mechanical Subsystem has been working on attaching the hinges to our demo satellite structure with deployable panels. Gotta say it looks pretty cool!

- the structure with all the deployables attached with working hinges.

- Another view of the structure.

CrawSat III – In ULToday.com

Rizwan Merchant — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 17:54:52 +0000

We’ve recently had the CrawSat III Launch featured in ULToday.com. Special thanks to Dr. Joe Abraham for the article!

Link: http://ultoday.com/node/3374

Gallery Link: http://gallery.ulcape.org/v/Press_Publicity/CrawSatIII_Launched_Mar_2011.jpg.html

CAPE-2 Featured at ULToday.com

Rizwan Merchant — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 04:39:37 +0000

ULToday.com has published an article at ULToday.com, about the upcoming launch of CAPE-2 in the NASA Cubesat Launch Initiative.

Link: http://ultoday.com/node/3256

C.A.P.E. in The Advocate

Rizwan Merchant — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 04:12:57 +0000

Marsha Siles from The Advocate News Paper based out of Baton Rouge, Louisiana ran two articles this morning about our recent acceptance as a Candidate for the NASA CubeSat Launch Initiative, and another on our educational outreach with NP Moss Middle School’s pearlsat payload during our recent flight of CrawSat III. Both articles are available online at The Advocate’s website, with links below.

CAPE-2 NASA Grant: http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/latest/Students-ready-satellite.html
NP Moss Middle School’s PearlSat: http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/latest/Middle-school-research-pearls-retrieved.html

Copies of the news paper clippings are also available in the CAPE Gallery under Press and Publicity along with older news articles about C.A.P.E. – http://gallery.ulcape.org/v/Press_Publicity/

Special thanks to Marsha Siles for her articles!