CSULB Beach Launch Team
Beach Launch Team is a student organization that specializes in the design, fabrication, and testing of liquid fuel rockets. The organization primarily participates in rocketry competitions within the United States and conducts liquid propulsion and launch vehicle research. BLT's primary mission is to provide CSULB students with industry-relevant experience through design problem solving and hands-on applications.
They aim to be the first university to launch a liquid-fueled rocket into space!
My Role
Avionics Engineer & Former Team Manager 2020
My role in the Avionics as Team Manager and an Engineer has me organizing, delegating, and scheduling Avionics tasks for over ten students. Since Spring 2020, we have been in the process of designing and developing of new EGSE. We will be using NI and ADAM systems for Data Acquisition. As of Fall 2020 since COVID-19 has put a hold on our lab time, thus halting further development of the new EGSE. Even though COVID-19 restrictions have affected us, we are still designing our inflight system and create a new project which has us designing an Electronic Coaxial Helicopter to deliver a 1kg payload 1.5km away.
As of Spring 2021, the Avionics group has shifted focus on the inflight systems of the rocket. I have taken the role of Avionics Engineer and left the role of Team Manager. My new role has me designing the inflight control system in collaboration with our Avionics lead. I have used Eagle CAD to develop, design, and build the inflight control system board design.
What is Avionics?
Avionics essentially is the brain of the rocket and covers all electronic hardware and software utilized by the rockets and ground support systems. Launch control hardware, active stability systems, telemetry, and RF tracking are just some of the examples of what avionics is developing. This is a subsystem team of Beach Launch Team, which works with embedded hardware systems, C++, LabView, and builds custom electronics from scratch.
Current Inflight Small Verison PCB
This board design was created to further test our larger-scale Inflight Systems board, but on a small scale in order to integrate it with a small rocket that will be launched on our Avionics Lead Rocket.
On this board, it contains a Teensy 4.1 microcontroller that is responsible for all data collection and position control of the rocket. An Adafruit BMP390 Precision Barometric Pressure and Altimeter sensor to give us the attitude of the rocket. Also, an Adafruit ICM-20948 IMU will be collecting Accelerometer, and Gyroscope data. Finally, we have a 5V Buck converter to scale down the LIPO Battery input to a useful voltage level for our components.
This smaller board design was complete within a week with the collaboration of my Avionics lead.
Current Inflight PCB
Current EGSE
This EGSE was designed and built by previous students. Currently, we are tasked with maintaining this until the new EGSE is built. It is using ADAM modules to receive all the data from the rocket and then using an Intel NUC as the control hub. The Intel NUC executes out LabView code and sends us real-time data. The EGSE is plug-in AC power then transformed to DC using a transformer. We then have different power modules for the different voltages our rocket and EGSE need to operate. These include 5, 10, 19, 24 volts, respectively. It is currently a controlled mess of wires, but we plan to downsize and organize the new EGSE.
