·· You might also check out the amateur radio astronomy community. They are sophisticated enough to utilize multiple antenna sites to increase sensitivity of reception. They could probably also tell you how powerful your lunar transmitter would have to be. As far as the rover goes, it's going to have to be checked for a number of problems. For instance, some metals will spontaneously weld themselves together in a high vacuum. And lubricants will evaporate.
Wow Phar,
That was just like deja vu , heres what I read about 10 minutes before I read your post.
The better-known organic lubricants are subject to evaporation in space,either with or without degradation by radiation. Gases which are normally absorbed to surfaces and reduce friction between mating surfaces will be removed. Mating metal parts or the same meterial or of meterials forming a solid solution in one another may weld together when clean surfaces are exposed as a result of the degrading influence of the space enviroment.
You guys seem like pretty serious about this moon project.
Some questions :-
1. Why only use Parallax products? Shouldn't we use the most qualified products?
2. Where are we going to do all the testing, in USA?
3. Will the high energy electrons in the Van Allen Radiation belts make the electronics go haywire?
4. How to orientate the lander so that it's feet faces the moon all the time?
5. How much money will be required to pull this off?
For me, I can help design boards using the SX processor with EAGLE.
·· I was going to mention the radiation issue, but I forgot. It's often mentioned how obsolete the computers aboard the space shuttle are, I believe they're implemented with 30-year-old 2900 series chip slice chips. But they are resistant to radiation effects. So I suppose somebody will have to research radiation hardened chips. I think one tack used to be just to use all bipolar chips as they were more radiation resistant than old NMOS chips, but I don't know what the situation is today (since CMOS is has a greater noise margin, they would probably be more resistant than NMOS too.) I used to be on Texas Instruments mailing list and my recollection is that radiation hardened chips are a LOT more expensive than the commercial version of the same chip, but then, it still shouldn't constitute much·of the final expense of the project.
Oh yeah, you could also use laser gyros to orient the lander (well, actually to tell it what the correct orientation would be, the orienting would be done by attitude control rockets).
William,
1. I would say that the propeller and the sx already have a seat, I figure if the 1802 can last in space them the propeller will be awsome (I have to say that, we are on there forum). As far as throwing a "ping" sensor on it ,It would take to much effort to try to get it rated.
2.We'll have to test at location's that best simulate the luner surface (I'm hoping that's Maple Lake MN , because I don't like flying)
3. see if you can dig some info on if NASA's spacecraft have had problems with the Van allen Radiation belts
4. have not crossed that bridge yet
5. My wife say's that I can pinch a penny so hard that Abe screams, I don't have a figure together yet but I would say that we'll do it for the cheapest ( I'm building a vacuun chamber out of a old 500 gallon propane tank).
pharseid said...
Oh yeah, you could also use laser gyros to orient the lander (well, actually to tell it what the correct orientation would be, the orienting would be done by attitude control rockets).
-phar
Phar, ·could you see if you could dig up some more info on a laser gyro ? Does anybody have a high power rocket license ?
aah, I can at least begin to explain the laser gyro. It relies on the Sagnac Effect to monitor the difference in time it takes the two parts of a split laser beam to reach a detector. It works by generating a ring of pulsed laser light (ring being a loose term, as it doesn't have to be circular) in two directions (CW and CCW) around a ring by using a semi-mirrored piece of glass.
So the setup has both the CCW laser and CW laser pulses reaching the laser detector at the same time. But if the whole thing were to rotate in say the clockwise direction, then the laser beam moving around the apparatus in the counterclockwise direction will reach the detector slightly later than the one moving in the clockwise direction. Vise versa if the whole thing were rotating counterclockwise.
It's this difference in the timing of the pulses reaching the detector that determines the acceleration the gyro is turning at.
edit: Sagnac effect (via wikipedia), simple pic and explanation of a ring laser gyro
I came across the ring laser gyro a while back when I was trying to understand why high power rings of laser light produce gravity in the center, kind of the opposite of gravitational lensing. I never figured that out, but it looks like coming across this by mistake was useful.
Post Edited (Whelzorn) : 11/19/2007 3:21:42 AM GMT
·· U.S. Dynamics Corporation makes conventional gyroscopes. I see a number of companies, such as Silicon Sensing Systems, make some kind of attitude sensing system, but these can consist of a number of things, like accelerometers (which probably are useful themselves), and magnetic sensors (not useful) and I haven't sorted that out yet. I will look in the industrial directory at work tomorrow.
Ok,
Heres the plan, I'll set my rover up with batteries , solar panel , sat attenna , a couple propellers and what ever sensors you guys would like to see . I need someone to write the software to operate the rover and to talk to the sat. . The rover should be able to have enough brains to stay out of trouble ( sat delay) . We'll set rover free come Jan. (when I'll have a ton of snow and it will be colder than heck). Some of you guys could set up a sat receiver ( I'm a calling amsat tomarrow) and control it from your place . I think that being none of you guys no the lay of my land it might be kind of interesting. I'm thinking if we can keep rover out of trouble on earth we might have a shot !
edit: I'm going to short change rover on batteries , this will add a little "fight for life"
Rocket guy's
lets start with a golf ball (or somthing close) , give me some specs to get a golf ball to the moon.This will be a good test of how much paper work It takes to get somthing off the ground (we could put some wheels on it and call it a rover, we would win 5 million for crashing a rover ).
·The rover should be able to have enough brains to stay out of trouble ( sat delay) .
· This may take much of the sexiness out of the project, but I think the best way to stay out of trouble is to move really slow. What is the diameter of the Moon, 3500 miles? If you travel at 1 mph, only during the lunar day, you could cover over 4000 miles in a year. I may be pessimistic, but if you depend on AI to stay out of trouble, I'm guessing you'd be lucky not to get stuck in the first hour. I think the main AI should be directed at aiming the antenna.·For instance, what should the rover do if it loses a signal? Sit for a while and wait? Try re-aiming the antenna? Backtrack? (In case the antenna's line of sight has been blocked by something.) Things like that.
·· That sounds reasonable. And it points out one of the problems, that it's difficult to anticipate all the problems that can occur. I was thinking in addition to testing the rover in a vacuum, you might have to cool the chamber with dry ice and also heat it at times to simulate the lunar environment.
I'm mot having to much luck with the satellite deal ,I'm thinking of going with "PINK" and some RF transceivers. At least with "pink" you guys could control it on your computer. I kinda wondering how the transceiver will hold up to -30 .
golf ball huh? OK, I'll take a look at what's involved in that whole scenario tomorrow. I guarantee it'll be more complicated than I can even think of right now, so I might start with conceptual stuff before diving into the numbers.
After reading up on the Van Allen Radiation belt last night I came to the conclusion that we have to split this up into groups. My strong points are fabrication & mechanical, I’ll focus all my research on making sure that the rover can move once it gets to the moon. I’m sending a e-mail to my buddy Max to see if he can help us pick out the best radiation hard electronics (his services won’t be cheap, I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to build him a steam powered motor cycle for his help) .Everybody else let me know what area of expertise that you would like to go after (propulsion, communications,guidance,ect…[noparse];)[/noparse].
If we are serious about this project then we need·some kind of project management with time management and work assignments else it could be an endless effort that could end up in a dead end. Isn’t it?·I am software engineer and I can help on the computer side (Windows) I am good at communication interface, multi-threading and more.· I am still a newbie from microcontroller standpoint but I have some knowledge in robotics like “behavior based robotics”.·If I can help just let me know. · Jean-marie. ·
If you want to go with using the internet for testing then you could use my soon to be released tcp sockets stack for the Propeller. It will allow people to communicate with the rover over the internet using a somewhat familiar serial like interface. Using a PINK seems a bit too complicated since I doubt you will be using HTTP for the real thing.
Never the less, I'm quite interested to see how this pans out. My area of expertise regarding microcontrollers is minimal tcp/ip stack implementation and hardware interfacing. I also have medium experience with .NET Winforms/ASP applications. So the most help I would be would be to devise a remote access / bridging system to let developers communicate with the rover over the internet.
Suntzu said... If we are serious about this project then we need·some kind of project management with time management and work assignments else it could be an endless effort that could end up in a dead end. Isn’t it?·I am software engineer and I can help on the computer side (Windows) I am good at communication interface, multi-threading and more.· I am still a newbie from microcontroller standpoint but I have some knowledge in robotics like “behavior based robotics”.·If I can help just let me know. · Jean-marie. ·
Welcome aboard Jean-marie , I know·the perfect person to be the project manager . His first name starts with a K and his last name ends with a Y
Max,
Your just the guy I'm looking for , Do you have a radio and can you receive amsats satellites ? The one I'm looking for has a 28.1400 Mhz uplink and a 435.3000 Mhz downlink .
I'm working on getting all of the equipment set up and everything should be up and running by the end of the year (or sooner.) I'm still new to the hobby but I've been reading non stop and amsat is what I've been focusing on! I am excited about this project and would love to help with anything that needs to be done.
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Max Wooden
Reedley, California
Comments
www.amsat.org/amsat-new/index.php
-phar
Your bot looks great! The drive-train looks really strong.
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Whit+
"We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths." - Walt Disney
That was just like deja vu , heres what I read about 10 minutes before I read your post.
The better-known organic lubricants are subject to evaporation in space,either with or without degradation by radiation. Gases which are normally absorbed to surfaces and reduce friction between mating surfaces will be removed. Mating metal parts or the same meterial or of meterials forming a solid solution in one another may weld together when clean surfaces are exposed as a result of the degrading influence of the space enviroment.
I had to read it 3 times
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Thank's Brian
www.truckwiz.com
·"Imagination is more important than knowledge..." ·· Albert Einstein
http://www.diycalculator.com/subroutines.shtml· My favorite website ( Bet you can't guess why)
Post Edited (Brian Beckius) : 11/19/2007 5:59:04 AM GMT
Some questions :-
1. Why only use Parallax products? Shouldn't we use the most qualified products?
2. Where are we going to do all the testing, in USA?
3. Will the high energy electrons in the Van Allen Radiation belts make the electronics go haywire?
4. How to orientate the lander so that it's feet faces the moon all the time?
5. How much money will be required to pull this off?
For me, I can help design boards using the SX processor with EAGLE.
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www.fd.com.my
www.mercedes.com.my
-phar
-phar
Hey, maybe Ted Turner could help you out.
1. I would say that the propeller and the sx already have a seat, I figure if the 1802 can last in space them the propeller will be awsome (I have to say that, we are on there forum). As far as throwing a "ping" sensor on it ,It would take to much effort to try to get it rated.
2.We'll have to test at location's that best simulate the luner surface (I'm hoping that's Maple Lake MN , because I don't like flying)
3. see if you can dig some info on if NASA's spacecraft have had problems with the Van allen Radiation belts
4. have not crossed that bridge yet
5. My wife say's that I can pinch a penny so hard that Abe screams, I don't have a figure together yet but I would say that we'll do it for the cheapest ( I'm building a vacuun chamber out of a old 500 gallon propane tank).
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Thank's Brian
www.truckwiz.com
·"Imagination is more important than knowledge..." ·· Albert Einstein
http://www.diycalculator.com/subroutines.shtml· My favorite website ( Bet you can't guess why)
Post Edited (Brian Beckius) : 11/19/2007 2:00:42 AM GMT
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Thank's Brian
www.truckwiz.com
·"Imagination is more important than knowledge..." ·· Albert Einstein
http://www.diycalculator.com/subroutines.shtml· My favorite website ( Bet you can't guess why)
http://www-robotics.jpl.nasa.gov/news/newsStory.cfm?NewsID=69
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Thank's Brian
www.truckwiz.com
·"Imagination is more important than knowledge..." ·· Albert Einstein
http://www.diycalculator.com/subroutines.shtml· My favorite website ( Bet you can't guess why)
·could you see if you could dig up some more info on a laser gyro ? Does anybody have a high power rocket license ?
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Thank's Brian
www.truckwiz.com
·"Imagination is more important than knowledge..." ·· Albert Einstein
http://www.diycalculator.com/subroutines.shtml· My favorite website ( Bet you can't guess why)
So the setup has both the CCW laser and CW laser pulses reaching the laser detector at the same time. But if the whole thing were to rotate in say the clockwise direction, then the laser beam moving around the apparatus in the counterclockwise direction will reach the detector slightly later than the one moving in the clockwise direction. Vise versa if the whole thing were rotating counterclockwise.
It's this difference in the timing of the pulses reaching the detector that determines the acceleration the gyro is turning at.
edit: Sagnac effect (via wikipedia), simple pic and explanation of a ring laser gyro
I came across the ring laser gyro a while back when I was trying to understand why high power rings of laser light produce gravity in the center, kind of the opposite of gravitational lensing. I never figured that out, but it looks like coming across this by mistake was useful.
Post Edited (Whelzorn) : 11/19/2007 3:21:42 AM GMT
·· U.S. Dynamics Corporation makes conventional gyroscopes. I see a number of companies, such as Silicon Sensing Systems, make some kind of attitude sensing system, but these can consist of a number of things, like accelerometers (which probably are useful themselves), and magnetic sensors (not useful) and I haven't sorted that out yet. I will look in the industrial directory at work tomorrow.
-phar
Heres the plan, I'll set my rover up with batteries , solar panel , sat attenna , a couple propellers and what ever sensors you guys would like to see . I need someone to write the software to operate the rover and to talk to the sat. . The rover should be able to have enough brains to stay out of trouble ( sat delay) . We'll set rover free come Jan. (when I'll have a ton of snow and it will be colder than heck). Some of you guys could set up a sat receiver ( I'm a calling amsat tomarrow) and control it from your place . I think that being none of you guys no the lay of my land it might be kind of interesting. I'm thinking if we can keep rover out of trouble on earth we might have a shot !
edit: I'm going to short change rover on batteries , this will add a little "fight for life"
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Thank's Brian
www.truckwiz.com
·"Imagination is more important than knowledge..." ·· Albert Einstein
http://www.diycalculator.com/subroutines.shtml· My favorite website ( Bet you can't guess why)
Post Edited (Brian Beckius) : 11/19/2007 4:35:22 AM GMT
lets start with a golf ball (or somthing close) , give me some specs to get a golf ball to the moon.This will be a good test of how much paper work It takes to get somthing off the ground (we could put some wheels on it and call it a rover, we would win 5 million for crashing a rover
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Thank's Brian
www.truckwiz.com
·"Imagination is more important than knowledge..." ·· Albert Einstein
http://www.diycalculator.com/subroutines.shtml· My favorite website ( Bet you can't guess why)
Post Edited (Brian Beckius) : 11/19/2007 6:46:01 AM GMT
Your the only one that said anything (your allways good for a "that a boy").
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Thank's Brian
www.truckwiz.com
·"Imagination is more important than knowledge..." ·· Albert Einstein
http://www.diycalculator.com/subroutines.shtml· My favorite website ( Bet you can't guess why)
· This may take much of the sexiness out of the project, but I think the best way to stay out of trouble is to move really slow. What is the diameter of the Moon, 3500 miles? If you travel at 1 mph, only during the lunar day, you could cover over 4000 miles in a year. I may be pessimistic, but if you depend on AI to stay out of trouble, I'm guessing you'd be lucky not to get stuck in the first hour. I think the main AI should be directed at aiming the antenna.·For instance, what should the rover do if it loses a signal? Sit for a while and wait? Try re-aiming the antenna? Backtrack? (In case the antenna's line of sight has been blocked by something.) Things like that.
-phar
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Thank's Brian
www.truckwiz.com
·"Imagination is more important than knowledge..." ·· Albert Einstein
http://www.diycalculator.com/subroutines.shtml· My favorite website ( Bet you can't guess why)
·-phar
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Thank's Brian
www.truckwiz.com
·"Imagination is more important than knowledge..." ·· Albert Einstein
http://www.diycalculator.com/subroutines.shtml· My favorite website ( Bet you can't guess why)
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Thank's Brian
www.truckwiz.com
·"Imagination is more important than knowledge..." ·· Albert Einstein
http://www.diycalculator.com/subroutines.shtml· My favorite website ( Bet you can't guess why)
Post Edited (Brian Beckius) : 11/20/2007 11:24:20 AM GMT
·
Jean-marie.
·
Never the less, I'm quite interested to see how this pans out. My area of expertise regarding microcontrollers is minimal tcp/ip stack implementation and hardware interfacing. I also have medium experience with .NET Winforms/ASP applications. So the most help I would be would be to devise a remote access / bridging system to let developers communicate with the rover over the internet.
Harrison
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Thank's Brian
www.truckwiz.com
·"Imagination is more important than knowledge..." ·· Albert Einstein
http://www.diycalculator.com/subroutines.shtml· My favorite website ( Bet you can't guess why)
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Thank's Brian
www.truckwiz.com
·"Imagination is more important than knowledge..." ·· Albert Einstein
http://www.diycalculator.com/subroutines.shtml· My favorite website ( Bet you can't guess why)
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Max Wooden
Reedley, California
Your just the guy I'm looking for , Do you have a radio and can you receive amsats satellites ? The one I'm looking for has a 28.1400 Mhz uplink and a 435.3000 Mhz downlink .
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Thank's Brian
www.truckwiz.com
·"Imagination is more important than knowledge..." ·· Albert Einstein
http://www.diycalculator.com/subroutines.shtml· My favorite website ( Bet you can't guess why)
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Max Wooden
Reedley, California