First things first…

Welcome to electrical! We build circuits, test them, and keep the magic smoke inside. Here’s some things to do before the first meeting:

Make sure you’ve completed ⏩️CB-01: General Member Guidelines
Create your member profile at the bottom of the Electrical page. We need this so we can assign you tasks here on Notion.

Check out out Electrical System Diagram to understand what exactly we’re doing here

Wow, that was a ton of acronyms! Here are some common ones that you’ll see around UTAT.

OBC	On-Board Computer (the brains of the satellite)
RF	Radio Frequency (communications to and from the satellite from Earth)
PAY-ELEC	Payload Electronics (the electronics that support our payload, a hyperspectral camera)
EPS	Electrical Power System (how we power the satellite in space)
ADCS	Attitude Determination and Control System (pointing the satellite in the right direction)
GSE	Ground Support Equipment (letting us take care of the satellite while on the ground)
MCU	Microcontroller Unit (the chips on the circuit boards that do the thinking)
BMS	Battery Management System (makes sure our batteries don’t 💣💥)
MPPT	Maximum Power Point Tracking (a system to get the most power out of our solar panels)
FINCH	Field Imaging Nanosatellite for Crop residue Hyperspectral mapping (our mission, a lovely backronym)

Let’s get started!

First thing to do is to get familiar with Altium, go ahead and get it installed and learn how to use it! This page also has a few tips and tricks that we’ve learned through the years.