Launch System at May launch

After a full day of working on the system, I have been able to figure out the most significant problem from the last launch. To save a few bucks, and to free up space, I used a smaller 12V battery in the launch controller, This setup left plenty of room for the circuit board and display panel but unfortunately, the battery drains too fast to get a full day's use out of the system. I'll need to check to see if there's enough room for the new, dual 6V battery system and replace the smaller battery if everything will fit. Otherwise, I'll need to find a different setup.

Knowing the problem is 90% of fixing the problem.

Mario

Greg May came by to help me test the radio changes today. The new antennas worked very well for everything we tried. Our worst case test was with the Launch Control Console in my office and the Pad Controller was outside about 200 feet away. This means the signal had to pass through two walls, a privacy fence, a small group of trees, and a 1.5-foot thick stone wall. Even with that, we got a signal strength of about 70 on my arbitrary scale; the smaller antennas would have been less than 15. Encouraged by this, I changed the code to use faster transmission settings. This allowed me to reduce the timeout and the resulting re-transmission times significantly producing a much more responsive feel to the overall operation of the system. When testing at all distances, using the faster speed, I observed no retransmission requests.

John authorized me to purchase new antennas and stands for our next launch.
 

Still some current draw issues on the launch controller. I'm working on it...

FWIW, I’ve had 4 pad controllers powered on for about 12 hours today and they seem to be doing well. I put a different battery in the launch controller after the ones I was using failed. The launch controller has now been powered on for 7 hours and is still working well. The battery is showing 12.3v. I’ll need to modify the box to fit the larger battery.

Some of the pad controllers exhibit low signal strength. I'll have a look at them separately. I suspect a bad internal connection to the front-mounted antenna connector.

I feel like I'm talking to myself...