Been a bit busy lately and haven’t had chance to update the blog. Happy to announce the Ava2 flight computer had its maiden flight on Saturday the 31st of March. I’ll update the blog with details and pictures shortly.
Initially I was going to reuse the AVA1 container which , despite being in the north sea for 18 hours, was still servicable. However this container weighed 300g and was quite large due to it needing to accomodate the older, larger board. After a few hours of hacking in the garage Ava2 had a new packaging :
As you can see it was alot smaller than the original one. Another noticable change was the inclusion of a heated U/V filter for the camera :
Using some enamelled copper wire from the inside of an old Antec PC PSU I had about 2.5Ω with 3Vs through it. This should have resulted in about 3.6 watts of power. The camera was a Canon A710 with my previous script set to take a picture every 5 seconds.
The board is now complete (less the cut down circuitry). I’ve made up 2 boards one with a 434.075Mhz transmitter on it and another with a 434.650Mhz one.
Aha! I see a new AVA has been born….
….I feel you kept the most important feature. The colour! 😀
Would be great to combine a launch again and set the record straight for a dry landing!