[Space] More goodies for the payload

Adam Greig random at randomskk.net
Fri Mar 19 08:47:47 UTC 2010


Hi Christie, Noisebridge,

We've found lithium batteries very reliable for high altitude projects
-- plain lithium, as opposed to any of the rechargeable types. You can
typically pick them up in a shop in AA format for a bit more than
alkaline batteries, and they get 3Ah and approximately 1.8V per cell,
so two are enough for a 3v3 system, or we have used four to feed a 5V
linear regulator. They last for a very long time (3Ah!) and are not
very affected by the cold. AA form factors have the additional
advantage that battery boxes are readily available, including built in
on/off switches.

Rechargeable batteries obviously have some advantages but for the
cost, weight and energy storage lithiums tend to work very well. If
you do go the rechargeable route, LiPo batteries tend to fair well at
high altitudes.

Cheers,

Adam Greig
CU Spaceflight

On 19 March 2010 08:33, Christie Dudley <longobord at gmail.com> wrote:
> It seems my boss feels like I need more toys.  So I have in my grubby little
> hands a tiny little board from Sparkfun - the package tracker I'd mentioned
> earlier.  I'd like to see what kind of data we can collect from it and see
> how that data compares to what we're pulling from the G1.
> This nifty little device could also be used to actually log the coordinates
> from the "good" GPS.  I'm looking at the protocol now to see what it'd take
> to splice this into the output of that.  I also need to come up with a
> battery, but since the thing only averages 31.7mA, meaning for a 5 hour
> flight, it'll eat up only about 159 milliamp-hours.  I vaguely remember
> people mentioning the best battery type to use, but since it's not written
> down anywhere... I'm really curious about which types were researched.
>
> Christie
> _______
> "We also briefly discussed having officers replaced by very small shell
> scripts." -- Noisebridge meeting notes 2008-06-17
>
> The outer bounds is only the beginning.
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/genriel/sets/72157623376093724/
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