Introductory meeting for people interested in PSAS (Portland State Aerospace Society).

The Portland State Aerospace Society (PSAS) is a volunteer group working on open source/open hardware amateur rockets. We build everything from the ground up, including rocket airframes, avionics hardware, Linux flight computer software, and communications systems.

Our current focus is testing a new airframe and building a new avionics system. We hope to launch with airframe only this spring/summer in eastern Oregon, and launch with the full avionics stack at BALLS 18 in the Blackrock Desert of Nevada on October 2-4. http://www.balls17.com/

http://psas.pdx.edu

PSAS meets every Tuesday in the Computer Science lounge area of the Fourth Avenue Building. Enter at through the glass doors at the main entrance at SW 4th and SW Hall. Walk up to the guard station in front of you, then turn left and walk down the hallway. Continue past the PGE office (on your left) and the Microsoft Research lab (on your right), until you see a wall in front of you. Turn right and walk through the glass double doors to the CS lounge area. There will be wooden tables and white boards.

There are people who get really excited about building hardware and Open Source. There are a few holes in the stack, and as a community we can get started on fundamental tools that will make things easier for all of us. Some topics that came up in the session on Saturday.

The tools for programming FPGA's are all proprietary let's design an open source FPGA, most of the patents are running out soon.

There are open source 3d modeling tools, but will they tell you where the center of gravity of your amature rocket is? That's an important thing to know when it passes mach 1.

Radio is awesome.

Look for an "Art of Community" book, or a tshirt that says "free as in freedom" amongst the dorkbot crowd to find the discussion. Don't worry if you miss this meeting there isn't even a listserv up yet it's a meeting of convenience as many of the people from Saturday's discussion are going to be at DorkBot anyways.

Portland State Aerospace Society (PSAS) is a volunteer group working on open source/open hardware amateur rockets. We build everything from the ground up, including rocket airframes, avionics hardware, Linux flight computer software, and communications systems.

Come early the first Tuesday of the month if you want to learn more or are thinking about joining the group. We are open to everyone no matter what your experience or interests. We are a public group and this is a public meeting!

http://psas.pdx.edu

AltOS — Building Amateur Rocketry Software

                         Keith Packard
                          Altus Metrum
                       [email protected]

Amateur rocketry enthusiasts build rockets somewhere between Estes and NASA sizes. Operating as sounding rockets, fights range from 1000m to more than 30km and are generally passively fin stabilized. Two of the significant challenges are deploying the recovery system components (generally parachutes) and providing tracking to locate the rocket after flight. Altus Metrum is a project building hardware and software for amateur rocketry, and AltOS is the suite of software running in the rocket avionics and on the ground to track and analyze the flight.

This talk will discuss the unique system challenges presented by rocketry, including high acceleration and speeds, automatic control of explosives and other flammable materials and the wide range of technical skills of the participants. Included will be a presentation of the hardware components used in the system and how that has driven the architecture of the AltOS flight software over four years of development.

About the speaker:

Keith Packard has been developing open source software since 1986, focusing on the X Window System since 1987, designing and implementing large parts of the current implementation. He is currently a Principal Engineer with Intel's Open Source Technology Center. Keith received a Usenix Lifetime Achievement award in 1999 and sits on the X.org foundation board.

abstract: Portland State Aerospace Society (PSAS) is a student aerospace engineering project at Portland State University. We’re building ultra-low-cost, open source rockets that feature some of the most sophisticated amateur rocket avionics systems anywhere. Learn some of the history of the group, why steering a rocket is very, very hard, what we’re doing to solve that problem.

bio: Open-Source Rocket Scientist. Currently the program manager of the Lab for Interconnected Devices at Portland State University — an electronics rapid prototyping playground for engineering students. Nathan has spent the last 7 years helping build a homegrown space program at PSU through volunteering at the Portland State Aerospace Society (PSAS).

Join the Portland State Aerospace Society (PSAS) for an open house on Wednesday April 17th from 5:00pm to 9:00pm in the PSU Engineering Building!

We'll be showing off all of our open source a aerospace projects, including:

• The engineering unit of OreSat0, Oregon's first satellite.
• OreSat0.5, our next CubeSat going to space in July!
• Liquid fuel rocket engines and our rocket engine test stand
• Amateur rockets
• Satellite ground stations

We'll have snacks and a lot of very enthusiastic students. Come on down and nerd out with us around aerospace!