Fortunately the variable throttle control technology we're developing for ASRI's Ausroc 2.5 is also transferable to the descent stage motor of the White Label Space lunar lander, so it's a win all round for our GLXP partner WLS, the Australian Space Research Institute, and us.
With parts for development provided by ASRI, Luke Weston has built a 60 V power supply for testing the motor which will drive the gearhead that will control the RP1 valve, and thus throttle propellent to the rocket engine.
After some simple testing, Luke has also tuned the Rutex R2020 servo drive board so as to give it full control of the motor / gearhead assembly, as seen below:
Along with this great work, Luke has also prepared some preliminary code for an AVR (Arduino) to control the throttle motor via the Rutex servo board, and done a marvellous job of updating the relevant documentation on the Wiki.
Ultimately, through Luke's and the rest of the build team's efforts, we'll prepare avionics to take instructions on a CAN bus and translate these to valve positions which will control propellant flow into the Ausroc A2.5 rocket engine, and thus thrust. All a bit exciting really
The annual linux.conf.au event was held in Wellington, New Zealand, in January. Among the speakers was Lunar Numbat's Jon Oxer.
The conference aims to bring together developers, community members, and users of Linux and other open source software. It has been running annually since 2001 and gets greater and more popular each year.
Jon's using his knowledge of open source hardware hacking on the build team of Lunar Numbat, and is currently working on throttle control avionics for Ausroc 2.5. This technology will transfer to the White Label Space lunar lander.
Jon's presentation covers the origin and goals of the Lunar Numbat project, and showed some of the technology in use.
The video is embedded below, in two parts. The entire talk can also be viewed and downloaded in various formats on the linux.conf.au 2010 video page.
Because Lunar Numbat is entirely a volunteer effort, Jon also put out the call for more people to help get the team off the ground - literally. The project requires all sorts of open source people, such as: