Antenna Deployment Concept, Kumu A'o CubeSat

Reid Yamura presents the simple nichrome wire antenna deployment mechanism that is proposed for use on a CubeSat. The MSP430F2013 microcontroller is used for the purpose of this demonstration.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• nichrome
• antenna deployment
• CubeSat

[KumuAoCubeSat]

The coil for the blow dryer is huge because it needs to intentionally dissipate heat into loads and loads of constant air flow.

A single strand of 1cm of nichrome wire can handle a certain amount of power dissipation before it disintegrates. A single coil of 2 meters of nichrome wire can handle significantly more power, and has more surface area.

What makes it possible for us to use a 9V battery is just using a small amount of wire which it heats up enough to melt our fishing line.

[KumuAoCubeSat]

sure. 2 ports of the MCU can be quite cheap compared to all the analog components you need to put on the board with a 555. I'm not sure how reliable the initial state of the 555 would be, so I'd be hesitant to let the 555 do it by itself. I'd be more confident by having a counter IC perform timing before deployment. Count the number of resistors, capacitors, and IC's. Using 2 pins can be much cheaper in board space, mass, power, time, and money.

[rdeveloper]

I wonder 2 ports of mcu are being occupied even after the deployment of antenna, is there a method or skill that will deployment the antenna using a 555

[rdeveloper]

blow dryer use 220 Volt, it contains in-home wire, will this hot wire heat up with 9V battery.

I wonder!

[KumuAoCubeSat]

The antenna shown is representative of what we're doing. You can adjust the monopole's length to an arbitrary frequency, then use the same kind of mechanism.

Technically, the antenna you see on the video is a hunk of metal, being that it's soldered onto a screw, mounted to the folded sheet of metal.

[rdeveloper]

what is this type of antenna? it does not look like a 433MHZ antenna! is it for uplink or download?