Welcome to Electrical!

Over this onboarding process, we’ll get you started with using Altium. This is the tool that we use to design our PCBs. The tool aids us in all that we do, even after the design during the testing stage— so do get familiar with it!

This specific onboarding project deals with designing a board with a sensor— specifically a gyroscope. Why a gyroscope? and why do we need one even though we have an ADCS system? Well, it never hurts to have more than one source of information. The satellite will be orbiting 500km+ above us. The more information we have about it, the better. Especially since we are an imaging mission.

A few more specifics: the gyroscope should be able to communicate its information through a protocol called I2C. It should also be powered by 3V3.

TLDR: Design a sensor board with a gyroscope that is able to communicate its information out using I2C. By communicate its information out, I mean it can talk to our onboard computer using I2C.

At the end of this onboarding, we hope you will:

  1. Have a neat little project you can put on your resume
  2. become more proficient with Altium, an industry-standard tool
  3. get used to reading datasheets for components
  4. have some understanding of communication protocols

Listed below are steps and requirements for the board.

Steps