A competition for space-bound students resulted in a tiny, can-sized, Raspberry Pi-powered satellite. Rob Zwetsloot boldly takes a look at it.

What would you do if you had to create a satellite the size of a drinks can? The yearly CanSat competition for students in their teens asks this question, and many teams have answered — including LittleBlueDot.

“The challenge for students is to fit all the major subsystems found in a satellite, such as power, sensors, and a communication system, into this minimal volume,” the team tell us. They came third in the country for their final build. As the competition instructions explain, “After building their CanSat, teams will be invited to launch events across the UK to launch their CanSats on small rockets, with their CanSats returning to Earth using a parachute designed by the students. Teams are set a primary mission of measuring air pressure and air temperature during the CanSat’s descent, with data being transmitted to the students’ ground station.”

They also needed to design a secondary mission, which in the case of LittleBlueDot included taking photos of the ground below to map it. “The idea of mapping large areas, including foreign bodies, came up when we were discussing potential asteroid mining in the future,” the team say. “And also improving efficiency in agriculture, both fields where large benefits could be seen from mapping land cheaply.”

Trial and error

For the project, Raspberry Pi was an obvious choice for the team — while a microcontroller would be able to handle the environmental recording and transmitting requirements, a Raspberry Pi computer allowed for on-board image processing. The team then got to work building and refining.

“Initially, a very basic CanSat was made to help visualise the size and space that was available to be worked with,” they explain. “Different ways to secure the Can’s inner electronics in an accessible way were explored. In V0, there were two bodies: a screw lid with an attached compartment behind, and the main module itself.”

The V1 build went from a vertical orientation to horizontal to accommodate a larger gap between the cameras. Across V1 and V2 builds, different ways of wiring up and loading the circuit were explored, and clear acrylic discs were added to protect the cameras from moisture and reduce their drag.

“In V1, the parachute was attached via four straight vertical holes,” the team continue. “V2 featured a more reliable solution, using four M5 nuts inset into the walls of the Can to secure the paracord in place and put the strain on the parachute rather than on the Can itself.”

After some issues at the regional launch, a V3 was created to better fit all the components they required.

“The Can was simplified by removing the inner module and trays [for the electronics], and a friction fit was used to directly mount components to the inside of the CanSat,” the team say. “During testing of the temperature readings, it was found that heat from the internal components was affecting the readings being taken. To mitigate this, fans were added for cooling, and vents were installed on both sides of the CanSat using a honeycomb grid to allow air flow. The strength of the vents were tested in Fusion 360 and they still passed the stress tests.”

With this, they were ready for the national launch, where they were part of the national finals.

Mapping with data

As well as cameras, the CanSat had temperature and pressure sensors, an IMU (inertial measurement unit), a magnetometer, and GPS. These were used to calculate altitude and orientation.

“The two on-board cameras took photos of the ground simultaneously,” the team explain. “This meant that an FFT [fast Fourier transform] taken of an image from the first camera would give a wave that was a translation of the wave an FFT would give for the second camera. This translation would vary based on the orientation of the Can, the distance between the two cameras, the altitude of the Can, and finally the actual altitude of points on the ground. Given values for the first three variables, the fourth could be calculated using trigonometry.”

The team came third overall in the competition. And the data? Sadly, due to a safety quick-release switch being released during launch, they were only able to get one set of images. Hopefully they can get it all working for another launch.

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We’re partial to a 3D printer around here. The Maker Lab at Pi Towers has a nice collection of various types and sizes to serve the unique needs of our engineers, so we’re pretty good at figuring them out across a range of brands. When we saw Form 4, the newest 3D printer from Formlabs, we figured it would be especially easy to get our heads around, seeing as it’s built on Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4.

Printing for professionals

While some printer brands focus on building machines to support the quick and easy home printing jobs lots of makers need, Formlabs has always been more focused on industrial customers — they were the first company to build a 3D printer capable of achieving professional part quality at an affordable price. Turning to our Compute Module 4 to base their newest machine around was a no-brainer as they looked to increase the speed, quality, and success rate of printing for their flagship line, providing a reliable, high-power solution capable of meeting the needs of businesses.

Formlabs was founded in 2011 and, these days, we see their printers used in all sorts of industries, including engineering, manufacturing, automotive, aerospace, and medical. All Formlabs printers across the range have various apps running in the background to move motors, regulate temperatures, log critical events, and so on. The new Form 4 would also need to run two high-resolution displays and a camera simultaneously, so more CPU, RAM, and graphics capabilities were required. Enter Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4.

Story time

Formlabs was initially most familiar with Raspberry Pi’s popularity with makers and hobbyists, and investigated whether the devices were also suitable for industrial applications, checking that they met needs regarding security, supply, ease of use, and, of course, price. The Compute Module line satisfied all their requirements.

Our Product Information Portal provides business customers and professional users with access to white papers, guides, compliance reports, and other information to help keep product development moving along at pace. Formlabs harnessed all of the above and managed to hit its time-to-market target. We do love a good success story.

There’s a much longer story behind Formlabs’ new Compute Module 4-based machine if you’d like to read it. You’ll find all sorts of juicy detail about the design, development, and journey to market, so if you’re into your printers or are curious about how Raspberry Pi supported this industrial use case, give our recent case study a read.

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