South Austin Makerspace

This is the monthly design status and update meeting. Participation is both in person and online.

Members of Austin Physics for Fun are now involved in the effort. -- https://www.meetup.com/physics-1/

The meeting will be held at a private makerspace, Diogenes. It is located in the same building as the adult club Colette Austin. The door is at the left end of the building, Suite C. Go to the back of the first floor workspace and head upstairs.

If you have questions please feel free to submit them in the comments below or send them to me directly.

Zoom meeting details will be posted about a half hour before the meeting begins.

HABEX - High Altitude Balloon Experiments

The reference to experiments is two-fold. The first is in regard to the actual balloon construction and flight processes. The second is a reference to the payload and what it does during the flight (e.g. images, environmental measurements, etc.). To be clear, there will be two design processes going on in parallel, the balloon proper and the payload. This initial flight is really focusing on the balloon to get that process pinned down and clearly defined. The initial payload should be simple (e.g. digital camera taking pictures).

One of the primary design considerations will be the use of CanSat techniques in the design and construction process. We may need to build a technology demonstrator for this (i.e. dummy payload) before the actual flight process.

Design Process:

Design/Buy > Assemble > Test > Loop (Will it fly?) > Flight Plan

Meeting Sequence:

Pilot - Initial meeting (possibly two) to gauge interest and get first round of participants.

Design - Group responsible for the first four stages of the Design

Process. - Multiple meetings.

Pre-Flight - Review process to date and verify readiness - Set the date of launch - Possibly two meetings

Launch - Two teams (Launch and Recovery)

Clean up - Launch team cleans up launch site and transitions to tracking and telemetry

Recovery - Recovery team (possibly several groups) chases the balloon and tries to stay ahead of it.

Post-Flight - Review, analysis, and release of flight report (including experimental results if any).

Flight Plan:

• Pre-Flight
• Schedule
• Assembly
• Launch
• Tracking
• Recovery

Constraints:

• COVID 19
• Budget
• Resources/Tools/Facilities
• Legal (e.g. FAA rules about weight and number of modules)
• People
• Transportation
• Review/Release Results

This is a Citizen Science project just getting off the ground in Florida. You do NOT need to sign up for this event. It is a placeholder only.

You DO need to visit this site for more information -- https://titanobservatory.org/

Titan Astronomical Observatory has this to say...

A couple of weeks ago I posted here, jokingly asking who wanted to pitch in to buy this $70k telescope off Facebook Marketplace. The amount of genuine support I got—both in the comments and in DMs—along with how awesome it would be to run this thing, made me seriously research whether it was possible to turn this into a telescope anyone could use. Well, it’s time to find out!

The Titan Astronomical Observatory is a nonprofit based in Lakeland, Florida, with the goal of purchasing, relocating, and modernizing this telescope; creating a web interface that allows students, amateur astronomers, and citizen scientists to reserve observing time; and designing a pipeline to automatically deliver calibrated data. We’re an officially incorporated nonprofit (501(c)(3) pending) with a four-member board, a potential site secured, an option contract granting us the exclusive right to buy the telescope, and a core team planning for the future.

If you’re interested in supporting the project by volunteering time or expertise—or you simply want to follow along—join our community on Discord!

We’re currently accepting donations via PayPal, and a full GoFundMe campaign is on the horizon!

Hybrid means that participants are both in person and online.

You do NOT need to sign up for this event. It is a placeholder only.

You DO need to check with these sites regularly for the latest event information and schedule -- https://www.meetup.com/austin-fpga-meetup-group/

Ever wonder how engineers and scientist proto-type new products or build affordable bespoke research equipment? Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) are one of the primary methods used.

Boolean Algebra -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean_algebra

Logic Gate -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic_gate

Karnaugh Map -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karnaugh_map

Quine–McCluskey algorithm -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quine%E2%80%93McCluskey_algorithm

Field Programmable Gate Array -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field-programmable_gate_array

Hardware Description Language -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware_description_language

VHDL -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VHDL

Austin FPGA has this to say...

Meet other FPGA developers developers in the Austin area. We're happy to discuss any aspect of development but some of us are especially interested in finding better ways of helping beginners get up to speed.

We hold monthly meetings at the Diogenes Makerspace with both physical and virtual participation. Details are in each Event's description. In between meetings we hold conversations on a Discord server.