Development of a CanSat

Abstract

In this Final year project, a CanSat system that uses in-house microcontroller processor board is designed and implemented. The system is capable to collect and transmit data from the CanSat to the ground station. Such a training kit can be provided to the secondary school students as it gives an opportunity to be involved in a complex CanSat project from conceptual design through software development, hardware integration and testing of the system.

Currently, most of the CanSat projects in Satellite Research Center (SaRC) use Mbed single-board microcontroller for CanSat system implementation, the cost of per set is quite expensive and the objective of these projects are mainly focused on advanced CanSat mission. In order to offer a low cost and an education based training kit to the secondary school students, an in-house microcontroller processor board is designed to control the CanSat system. The main components involved are the pressure sensor, accelerometer, GPS receiver and RF modules. All the components are assembled on one round shape PCB as the in-house microcontroller processor board. The mission selected is telemetry as it is the primary mission for the general CanSat system design. The PC is set as the ground station to monitor the collected data from CanSat. The hardware and software development are discussed in depth in this report. Finally, the recommendation for the future work is to implement new features to the existing system, such as taking image or a “fly-back” CanSat. The “fly-back” CanSat is the advanced mission that designs to land as close as possible to a target location by a control system.