Light sensor and other ramblings

[rctaudio]

Robert and I have finished our construction of a simple light sensor. It should take a measurement every 10 seconds and store it in memory. We will be talking to our Physics professor to see if DVC has any calibrated light sources, so we can figure out how to interprit our data. I'd also like to add a temperature sensor to get some concrete temperature readings from inside our payload. This way we can perhaps have a more realistic idea of operating conditions for our batteries, and any other items we send up as well. We are currently using a BASIC STAMP chip, however it has limited onboard eeprom memory ( about 2kb) I was looking into purchasing additional eeprom chips and figuring out how to use them, but I'm not sure If I could learn all that and have it working properly prior to launch. I am looking into possibly purchasing an arduino and a data logger shield and using that instead. (Are we going to do the group education buy?)

 

I had a though about tracking it down after it lands. Incase Murphy decide to be a jerk.... I was thinking we could also hook up a small piezo speaker inside and have it set to "chirp" every minute or so. We could write in a delay so after 3 hours (or whatever we decide our flight time is) it does a short blast every minute or so. I think that would help us locate it in case it lands in brush or somewhere slightly concealed. What are your thoughts?

 

[rctaudio]

so I've got the arduino to play with now.  I have not done anything with it.  I had one mid term today, one tomorrow and one next week. so i'm going to put it off until after that last midterm.  It shouldn't be to hard.  I also ordered some sensors (i hope show up in time). one is a light sensor that has a built in dac that actually gives you the readings in lux, no convertiving required. 

[WSiaB]

No worries - school comes first.  Try to work on it by Saturday though.