Summary

• Led a team of 5 people to design, build, and test the radio communication system for a high-altitude balloon.
• Authored over 20 design, calculation, and development documents, creating a foundation for future iterations.
• Designed and implemented telemetry packet formats in Python for radio transmission and reception.
• Built Grafana dashboards to display location, health, and payload packets received from the balloon.
• Streamlined the ground station setup with Docker Compose for local map server and Grafana instance deployment.

Details

In October 2023, I joined the SFU Satellite Design Team as the Radio Communications Lead for a high-altitude balloon project. I led a team of 5 people within the larger 20-person project team, focusing on designing, building, and testing a complete radio communication system capable of maintaining contact with the balloon throughout its flight path.

I designed telemetry packet formats to establish reliable communication protocols between the balloon and ground station. These formats efficiently transmitted location, health, and payload data while incorporating error handling and redundancy measures to ensure data integrity during transmission.

For data visualization, I built comprehensive Grafana dashboards to display real-time telemetry, featuring customized panels for monitoring location coordinates, altitude, internal temperature, and payload-specific metrics.

To improve ground station operations, I implemented Docker Compose for the local map server and Grafana instance, significantly simplifying deployment. The ground station was built on a VMWare VM for flexibility and ease of testing. Working closely with the computing team, my team and I implemented the telemetry packet format with Python and ensured smooth data transmission between all system components.

I also designed a comprehensive backup tracking system as a failsafe measure, detailed in the Tracker Design Document. This system utilized a repurposed smartphone that transmitted telemetry packets to a Cloudflare Worker, which then routed data to a PostgreSQL database. The backup system featured its own dedicated Grafana dashboard, providing an independent monitoring solution in case of primary system failure.

Throughout the project, I authored over 20 technical documents covering design specifications, calculations, and development guides. These documents detailed everything from radio frequency calculations to software architecture decisions. Our team's progress was showcased through three formal design review presentations to leadership, where we refined our approach based on valuable feedback.

Although the system was flight-ready, the project was unfortunately put on hold in August 2024, just days before the planned launch date, due to unresolved insurance issues. The system designs, documentation, and implementations remain available for future iterations of the project.