Tests
Voltage
The tests shown is of a cycle of a simulated orbit as the batteries are charged and discharged.
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Below
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Yellow is the solar simulator turning on and off
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Blue is the SuperCapacitor
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Light Blue is the Battery
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Red is the RC Timer
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Magenta is 3.36 volts
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Green is the load representing the satellite
Current
The test shown is testing our current sensors
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The Blue line is the voltage read out of the current sensor as the voltage is changed.
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We will need to boost the voltage out of the sensor so it is readable to some degree of accuracy.
Power
The test shown is testing there results of our baseline power system over 63 cycles
Taking the average of the power in we get about 250 mW
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The average power out is 150 mW
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Therefore, the power loss from the solar panels to the circuit is at least 40% Loss
Priliminary Conclusion
Further Testing
Tracking the voltages with the TI microcontroller we observed the Safe Circuits output and need to modify it.
The plot shows that when the voltage of the battery goes down, the current goes up to compensate and the power remains at an acceptable level for operation.
The plot above shows the data collected by the MSP430 Texas Instrument microcontroller over a period of 5 hours.
The following charts display examples of data that we gathered from our 'flat-sat' test bed, a system that has been flawlessly running for the past 3 months
This is a photo of our 'flat-sat' set up, consisting of a high intensity light, a cake turner and our power system.