So many things have been changed since the first experiments… the roster has grown, now we have a stable facility where to fly everyday as we want.. and many problems have been arisen, forcing us to reschedule  our project.  Fortunately, everything is going in the right way.

A parachute system is being redesigned based upon an “harpoon system”, the mother-ship design for Space-Fish deployment here in Madrid is done and we have started to build it , and Héctor is getting an official license to fly!

This project is growing in complexity, and we want to be very careful to handle it rightly, step by step, learning from the small fails (a crash is nothing for us now! xD) to face the great challenge of the Space-Fish.

Here there is a photo from today:

Space-Fish team

From the left to the right:

César: Our contact with the Control Division in ESA. We will miss you Nuno! good luck at  Georgia Institute of Technology!

Juan Carlos: Our model airplane making  expert, he is really helping us with the mother-ship and tuning the Space-Fish.

Prof. José María: Our professor,  really thanks for giving us the opportunity of making the project real.

Fernando:  Yes, he has code inside the Linux Kernel… like everybody of course xD.

Héctor: Just imagine it, but he has just created it made of chewing gum one minute before.

Enrique: Etiquette researcher, actually Kalman is his apprentice .

And we don’t forget our foreign roster, Koni and his brainstorming, and Kamil! actually we hope to present to the community our autopilot in Poland in our first UAV contest this September

Thanks to everyone for your support!

Guys from Astilleros Venturi have done a really really good job as you can see in the picture.

Ángel from Astilleros Venturi posing with Space-Fish

We still doing progresses, testing avionics, testing the Smart-Fish, testing all-together, testing all-separated, testing the testing… anyway, we hope to put the Space-Fish in the air as soon as possible! , stay tuned!

This video is from Mejorada del Campo, a runway closer from our laboratory.

We just want to show you  some pictures of the Space-Fish molds in our shipyard Astilleros Venturi (check out this guys at www.astillerosventuri.com).

Koni showed them the way to do a really lighter and robust Space-Fish, and it seems they are the perfect guys to accomplish a really beautiful glider, we expect to have the first copy until the end of this month.

Space-Fish mold, bottom part and top-left part.

pd: And we have to deliver the documentation to BEXUS crew… we will be on time!

Enjoy!

Here is one of our fishes ready to fly, enjoy!

Fish ready to swim into the air

]]> http://www.spacefishproject.com/2010/04/we-still-alive/feed/ 0 http://www.spacefishproject.com/2010/03/autopilot-final-electronics/ http://www.spacefishproject.com/2010/03/autopilot-final-electronics/#comments Fri, 19 Mar 2010 10:19:33 +0000 noether http://www.spacefishproject.com/?p=393 More news,

the final hardware version of the autopilot is done, and now it has passed to the testing and validation phase at the laboratory.

Autopilot Hardware

The first board is the core of the autopilot with two microcontrollers, the GPS, the SD card and the power stage.  Second floor is the quiet system, the analog part, with the inertial unit, magnetometers, and pressure sensors.

There are still missing a small heater, on a  third floor, and a little expansion board with the final radio-modem authorized by the Rexus-Bexus crew, it is currently used in satellites and high-altitude airplanes with more than 100Km of range! At this moment we are interfacing the autopilot with the little X-Bee radios (this little blue board in the picture) with more than 2Km of range, more than enough for testing the electronics in Madrid.

It is too "heavy"!

Yesterday we planned the next Saturday experiment session, including the taking off of the Smart-Fish (the Space-Fish but with electric motor), everything seems right, all the checking has been done… now only one thing left.. to fly!

Space-Fish frontal

Yes! We are so proud announcing we have finished the molds production. NB Composites has done an excellent work as you can see in the photos, the work is amazing, and now the SpaceFish is more than a 3D CAD representation. Next step is to bring the molds to Spain and start the Space-Fish production to fly it. Kamil is in conversations with some transport companies, we hope to arrange a safe transport during this week from Poland.

Space-Fish top part

How is it going our work at the laboratory? The final autopilot electronics is almost done, and its firmware is being developed further day by day with our experiments in boats and trainer planes. We will try to post some photos from our experiments during this week.

Oh! We forgot to tell you, it seems the rain in Madrid is going to stop, giving us a break to start a serious campaign of flight testing, and that includes flying our Smart-Fish this Saturday. This week is going to be an exciting week, fingers croosed!