[HSIS] Launch Review

[Satyam Nayak]

Positives: Nothing lost.

Negatives: Nothing worked.

Camera:
Somehow stopped taking pics while still being packed. Need to determine if
this was because of unintended button pushing or if it was because of too
much flipping and turning while packing.
The way it works with CHDK is that the shutter button starts and stops the
script.

For human convenience, the shutter buttons have a slightly higher profile,
making them easy to click - and it is entirely possible that a zip tie dug
into it once, and that caused it to pause the script.

We need to find a way to package the camera such that none of the elements
are pressing into any buttons.

An ideal solution would be a foam enclosure of just the right size that we
seal up after setting off the camera. I wonder if there is a way of doing
this.


Tracking / Cell phone:
Stopped working even as we were packaging, but even if it had worked
initially, we have no idea how it will hold up later on. I think everyone is
in the favor of ditching the camera and going with radio chirpers. We need
to investigate into this.

Another thing is we need to make sure that the tracker keeps going for
several hours, in case something goes wrong and our payload gets towed to
another place. Even if it chirps once every 30 mins after the first few
hours, we will at least have a general idea of where it is going.

I am not exactly sure what the story for today was, I think Ethan can fill
us in on the details.

Packaging:
The foam board backing is not a bad idea, but I think we need to pair it
with something more structural for a standalone launch. We can even string
them up separately like the way they did to the payloads today, that way we
can use the best packaging for each module without compromising the other
ones.

It would also be nice to work out a design such that we can pre-assemble
parts and put them together with relative ease once we put in the main
components - since there really is no way around having to activate
components just before the launch. I guess we should aim for a build time
less than what it takes to inflate the balloon, so we can start as the
balloon is being inflated, and have everything ready to go as by the time
the balloon is ready.

Component coupling:
After today's experience I'd say that we want any component to rely as
little as possible on any other component, to avoid catastrophic failures.
We were not planning on any nonessential coupling any way, but I figured it
was worth repeating.


Overall, I think it was a good learning experience. It would have been nicer
if at least the camera had worked, but this is at least much better than
losing the payload without knowing that the camera had stopped working too.
So all in all, given that both of our components failed, this is possibly
the best outcome we could have had. We'll at least know much better when we
send out our own standalone payload. Saved us a fair amount of money too.

I am sure I am forgetting something, feel free to add your thoughts.

Also Ethan probably has some observations from the tracking experience as
well.

-Satyam
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.makerslocal.org/pipermail/hsis/attachments/20100410/48e1c9a9/attachment.htm>