We’re now entering the testing phase, with a Code Assurance Test this Wednesday at 6:30 PM in the CAPE Lab. Everyone interested may come join!

First off, after many long hours in the lab (and some very stressful late nights), I can happily say the code integration is finally showing some great progress. Currently our code is capable of the following:

- displaying gps data (coordinates, altitude, time, and number of satellites connected)
- real time clock (used to keep a running tally on the duration of the flight)
- watch dog time (incase something begins locking up power can be reset, hopefully it won’t be needed!)
- displaying internal and external temperatures to the balloon package
- giving pressure readings
- giving voltage readings on our batteries.
- three cameras able to take up to 20 photos per camera by command from ground (indivisually and all together)
- comm able to transmit successful beacons to ground and receive commands to set a new interval for the beacon to be sent down (choices being 15, 10 and 5 seconds)

(Photo of Ethan working on the camera code)

We’re still working on the integration of a current reading from the onboard fuel gauge, sending commands from ground to trigger a cut down mechanism and another to toggle a siren, and final testing of the cameras. Hoping to get that going soon.

Secondly the structure that will house the electronics is pretty much ready for flight day, minus the final sealing. Below are some photos of the structure:

The structure before being populated,

and after of the entire package. On top you can see a siren and switch to power the electronics.

A close up on our power switch, i’m actually pretty excited that theres a cover for the switch, kind of like in those movies where theres a switch or button behind a glass box.

Close up on the siren mounted on the top of the structure.

View of the inside. Pictured: a placeholder board while the actual board is being used for testing, two of the three cameras secured in their slots aimed out holes fashioned on the side of the box sealed by Plexiglas.

One of the battery holders inside the box.

and here we have the board itself, with the gps unit on the side.

The three cameras outside being tested during the integration process, photos from the test below:

this is a photo we took of one of the CAPE-1 models in the lab from one of the cameras during testing.

Another photo of Casey one of the coders of the GPS subsystem.

and one more of myself, and Chase in the background.

The next photo is actually a compilation of 9 or 10 photos taken by a camera inside the structure to test how the photos looked from behind Plexiglas as the box slowly fell from the table….don’t worry everything is still ok. Nothing broke!

the quality of the photos behind the Plexiglas doesn’t seem too bad.

After this is all done, we’ll be entering an intensive testing period to ensure everything works fine. Launch Date hasn’t been decided yet, as a time table for the testing period hasn’t been determined just yet. So keep an eye out for an update with a launch date and more updates!

Also special thanks to the Cubesat Workshop for posting videos of all the presentations! For other presentations from this year’s Conference go here:
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/CubeSatWorkshop/v3

Below is the video:

We recently got our board in for Balloon 3, and are in the process of populating it with pieces.

The OBC has integrated Sensors into the main code, and is currently setting it’s eyes on getting comm and gps done soon.

Below is a screen of hyper terminal recieving the Balloon 3 Beacon with data from the temperature and fuel gauge sensors. The pressure sensor is also integrated, but the sensors board can’t support that particular sensor, so the data from pressure is invalid….but hey its progress right?

We’re hoping to set a firm launch date at tomorrow’s meeting.  So stay tuned!

Just a heads up that the website here at http://ulcape.org is still moving along slowly into the twenty-first century.

You may have noticed the new twitter widget in our sidebar. Well, that’s because we now have a twitter account.  You can follow us at http://twitter.com/ulcape.  Oh, and you may have noticed a few other tweets in the sidebar; the widget contains tweets from @ull_eece and @ulcape as well as any tweets with the #ulcape tag or which contain the word ulcape.

So, that’s all for now.  Enjoy our new features, follow us on twitter, facebook and linkedin and share the news with all of your friends.   Thanks for stopping by.

This is just to highlight some of the new features available on the website.  One of the more prominent features for our mobile users is the shiny new interface for iPhones, Blackberry’s and a few other mobile devices.  The mobile AJAXiness goodness comes from the guys at BraveNewCode.

Another feature for all of our users include the social bookmarking links at the bottom of this post and any other news post.  This is the social web after all.  So, we at CAPE offer you, the reader the chance to spread some link love with all of your friends real or not.  There are also options for saving to PDF and printing in the lineup as well.

Some of you may have noticed the little snippet above has been around for a while now.  Unfortunately our feedburner was not actually configured to allow email subscriptions so entering your email address just led to an error screen (shame on us). Fortunately, the situation has been rectified with a few simple steps you can subscribe to updates from our website.  You will receive an email anytime a new post is made to the website, but never more than one email a day.  So feel free to enter your email address, sign up and stay up to date.  The email subscription is ran by Google’s FeedBurner and CAPE will not have access to your email address to send you anything including spam. You will just have to trust Google to not be evil.

Lastly, there has been some work done on the wiki side of our website as well. There is no screenshot because it is in nowhere near it’s final state as far as looks are concerned.  However, the behind the scenes foundation is being laid to integrate the wiki (at least visually) with the main site you are viewing now.  Also, much of the important content has been ported over by Wade and myself including the PIC tutorials that were so popular.  All in all, the website is slowly progressing to a unified tool for CAPE to reach the public with.

That just about covers the changes around the website.  Just be sure to check out the photo gallery for some new (well, old) photos from the CAPE team circa 2004.  In the next couple days there should be some more albums from the CAPE-1 days as well.