Overview

Dates: April 2020 to May 2020

This was a board I developed for Portland State Aerospace Society. It’s main purpose was to deliver power and control signals to 9 cameras arranged in a ring. The camera ring is on a rocket titled LV3.1.

My Role

I received the requirements from the Avionics team, and used those to design the board and select particular components. Then I created the schematic in Autodesk EAGLE, and laid out the board as seen above. Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, I was unable to physically stuff the board with the components I ordered for it, and this was done by students at PSAS.

Process

The main requirements were

1. Deliver enough power to the 9 cameras and the ATV transmitter
   1. Cameras: 12V at 270mA per camera = 12 V @ 2.43 A = 30W (OMG)
   2. ATV: << 1 W so must be << 100 mA
   3. Plan on 3ish amps continuous
2. Start recording with the cameras upon power up
3. Include a power off/on external switch for camera and ATV power
4. Switch between an upwards facing camera and a downward facing camera as the source signal for the transmission after drogue and main signals are fired
5. Use a timer that switches a signal for 30 seconds
6. Read telemetrum signal to the recovery board without interrupting it
7. Deliver power/charge the battery to the transmitter
8. Monitor shore power, disable recording when shore power is on
9. Charge battery when shore power is on

I designed a timing circuit in order to satisfy requirement 5. The full schematic is shown below:

camera_board_schematic

Results

The board has been assembled and is sitting in the camera ring.