Welcome to the third installment of our hardware blog post series! This week’s post highlights the onboard computer, which is a part of the command and data handling team’s work. Keep reading for more information on this essential piece of hardware and what it does for the satellite!

Q: What is the OBC (onboard computer)?

A: The on-board computer is a commercial board that will act as the "brain" of the satellite. Our on-board computer is the NanoMind A3200 (as observed to the right on image 2) manufactured by GOMSpace and will be mounted to the CDH Motherboard (as observed to the left on image 2), a custom printed circuit board, in order to interface with the rest of the satellite.

Q: What is the OBC used for?

A: The OBC gets information about the health and state of the satellite and takes any appropriate action to make sure everything is working nominally. It performs tasks like getting housekeeping data, executing any commands the satellite receives from the ground station, and ensuring all the other parts of the satellite are working as expected.

Q: What are the software improvements since the last version?

A: We recently changed our software design to use the software provided by the manufacturer to write the software on the OBC. It makes our system simpler and easier to implement!

Q: What progress have we made during quarantine?

A: Quarantine has seen some major design changes like the redesign of our software, lots of planning tests to do once we can get back in the lab, and trying to find ways to write code on different platforms!

For more information, head to our NEUDOSE team website through the link in our bio! Feel free to reach out if you have any additional questions regarding the onboard computer or general hardware here at NEUDOSE.