This week I spent time working on the pretests and the design document. For the design document, according to feedback I adjusted the block diagram, because I forgot the motor controllers in the presentation. We did a drop test and a test of propeller thrust to conclude our pretest phase.
The drop test gave us an idea of the amount of time available for onboard computations and movement. The propeller test would verify the 1kg thrust metric from the product listing. We put together the parachute and the weight and headed to the Pausch Bridge, where I released the items from the top, while Vikram waited below to retrieve and ensure no passers by. Daniel filmed from the street exit on the fifth floor of the Gates Center.
The propeller test was somewhat successful, though we had some problems with the PWM generator while getting started. All in all, we completed the tasks on our schedule that require our combined attention. My individual task during this week and going into next week involves digital filtering of the RSSI data we collected last week.