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A long overdue bug fix and testing update.

A project log for Arduino rocket stabilization system [UD: 7/14/17]

Arduino powered rocket stabilization system for mid to high power rockets that gets rid of the pitch over and subsequent downrange flight

arseniodevArsenioDev 10/20/2015 at 18:471 Comment

This system has been plagued with a pair of bugs that defied all logic; the Harlem Shake bug where the IMU spits random values out of nowhere even when perfectly still and the Iceman glitch where the whole system freezes up and shuts down. After mucking around with the code and a string of long nights trying to figure out what the heck was wrong with the system, I finally fixed the problem. The root cause is just inferrences at the moment, if anyone has a better theory I'd be glad to hear it. Simply changing the serial baudrate from 9600 to 115200 appears to have fixed the problems. Reading the serial logs led me to believe that the freezing glitch was caused by a FIFO (First In First Out) overflow due to the appearance of that message just before the system locked up. Initially, I had messed with the FIFO configuration to no avail before inferring that the data was coming in at a much higher rate than it was being output. My assumation is that the transcoding of the data was taking up too much processor power and causing it to get way out of whack. Googling around proved this to be the case and the fix was to increase the baudrate. After applying this fix, the system ran for 10 hours without any bugs or freezing at all, then I tested it 5 more times with resetting and the bugs did not reappear.


A few months ago I wrote a request on the member board at TechShop DC asking if anyone had ideas on how to get permission to use a runway for kinetic testing of a system, much to my surprise I got a response. None other than the owner of the Washington Executive Airport offered to let me use his 3000 foot runway for the testing. I am planning on heading up there sometime in November to check out the airport and start doing test operation planning and figuring out where to put cameras for video capture. This also is going to be time for the test rig to be built and I'll be needing to start fuselage integration immediately, or at least very soon. More updates as it comes!

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ArsenioDev wrote 10/21/2015 at 02:13 point

For some reason vine embeds do not work here :( 

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