Badgercub

BadgerCub

Designed to be a bare-bones flight computer for balloon payloads. Has onboard a Venus634FLPx GPS and a CC1111 combined micro-controller and radio transceiver from TI. Also provided are two pyro channels, built in 900mAh LiPo battery and LiPo charging through USB and a Sarantel SL1204R helical GPS antenna.

Mass 21g (without battery), 40g (with battery).

Flights

• Nova 14 - First flight and successful uplink test.

Rev1 Issues

• GPS LED connected to ground instead of 3.3V (Fixed 16/11/09)
• GPS backup battery pin need to always be connected to something, add option to connect to 3.3V (Fixed 16/11/09)
• GPS REGEN pin needs to be connected to 3.3V (Fixed 16/11/09)
• Make the pyro connector holes a bit bigger to fit the larger diameter pins of the cool orange connectors (Fixed 16/11/09)
• The current switch really really sucks. (Better quality drop-in replacement: http://parts.digikey.com/1/parts/1211254-switch-slide-1pdt-6vdc-0-3a-smt-js102011saqn.html)
• Reverse supply protection diode
• Consider moving to a switch mode supply, although for operation from a LiPo its not to bad to use a linear. A buck-boost would squeeze some more juice out if its not too much faff.
• GPS antenna package is a but too wide.