A Bintroduction to electronics

If electronics and coding aren’t your jam, don’t worry! You’ll also need structural engineers (to help make sure your payload physically connects to the spacecraft), scientists (to design your experiments and interpret your data), and team members to help with project management, documentation, and outreach.

If electronics and coding are your jam, this kit will help you to practice some of the fundamental skills required to build a payload for a Binar cubesat. Each kit contains enough equipment to run three simultaneous activities. We picked these parts based on price and availability to make the program as accessible as possible. The same activities can also be adapted to work with other parts (in particular other microcontrollers, such as Arduino or Micro:Bit hardware).

Each step of this project builds on the last, so keep your projects assembled between steps if you can.

Core skills

This introductory activity will give you a chance to practice:

• Prototyping a project using a breadboard
• Selecting a component and reading a data sheet
• Programming a microcontroller
• Reading and interpreting input from a sensor using a microcontroller
• Responding to a command from outside your circuit

Parts

These components form the basis of your project, and will be used to connect all your other components together. They’ll also be handy prototyping supplies to have around when you start work on your full payload.

For this project, we’ll be using a piece of prototyping gear called a breadboard, which lets us plug and unplug components without having to solder them in permanently. If you’ve never used a breadboard before, you may want to read this tutorial before you get started.

You’ll find these components in the bottom section of your box, if you got one from us.

Equipment

You will also need some extra equipment outside of what’s provided in the box:

• Multimeter
• Windows computer, with at least one USB port and the ability to install the Arduino IDE and Tiny AVR Programmer drivers.

1. Setting up

The first thing we need to do is turn our battery voltage into something a little bit smaller and more consistent. On the spacecraft, your payload will be supplied with anywhere from 6.0-8.4 volts, depending on how much charge the batteries have. In this kit, we’re using a 9v battery, which will also decrease slowly as the battery discharges.

In this part of our project, we’ll use a regulator to drop that down to the 5v our components use, and some capacitors to make sure there are no sudden changes.

Parts

You’ll find these in the top row, first left compartment of your box.

Equipment

• Multimeter

Instructions

2. Sending a message

Now that we have the power supply we need, we’re going to get our microcontroller up and running, and test it by blinking an LED.

Microcontrollers let us use code to interact with our circuit. They let us measure what’s going on in the parts of the circuit they’re connected to, and control parts of that circuit based on what we measure.

We’ll be putting code on our microcontroller from a computer using a device called a programmer. Before you start this part of your project, you’ll need to set your programmer up by following the instructions found here.

Parts

You’ll find these in the top row, second left compartment of your box.

Equipment

• Windows PC with at least one USB port

Instructions

3. Receiving commands

Our cubesat can blink out a message to us – so how do we send one back?

For this activity, we’re using a button, but the same principles apply whether we’re a cubesat getting commands from the ground or a payload getting commands from our spacecraft bus.

Parts

You’ll find these in the third top row compartment of your box.

Equipment

• Windows PC with at least one USB port

Instructions

4. Measuring our surroundings

We’re going to add a temperature sensor (and an extra LED) to our circuit. By measuring how many volts are coming from the output pin of this sensor, we can determine whether the sensor is above or below a particular temperature, and light up the right LED.

This one will require some experimentation to calibrate. Having a selection of hot and cold items on hand to test might be useful.

Parts

You’ll find these in the third top row compartment of your box.

Equipment

• Windows PC with at least one USB port
• Multimeter

Instructions

5. Sensing from afar

We’re going to modify our circuit to detect light, instead of temperature. We’re still measuring how many volts our sensor gives our microcontroller, but we’re using slightly simpler components, so we’ll have to do an extra couple of steps ourselves to get it working.

Parts

You’ll find these in the fourth top row compartment of your box.

Equipment

• Windows PC with at least one USB port
• Multimeter

Instructions

In progress – check back soon!