Sponsership

Many thanks to Barry Lunn, CEO of Arralis, for sponsoring our secondary mission. 

The Final Week

This past week we have been working on all of our components and the programming. We have also been working on our final presentation.

Yesterday morning we visited another primary school as a part of our outreach part of the competition.

Parachute

After purchasing nylon material and strong thread, today we created our parachute with a simple design onto it.

First we had to cute out the circles and then tack them together using the thread. After everything was tacked in place we then used the sewing machine to sew it all together properly.

We also worked on our final presentation and our programming today.

The Vale Star

We are excited to say the Vale star are running an article on your project next week, to let people know about the competition and how the buccaneers are getting on. So make sure to look out for it in the local newspaper. Thanks

Outreach

Last week we did a presentation to primary schools on the eclipse and our CanSat project. We are planning to go to more primary schools after Easter as a part of our outreach for the project. We are also hoping to get an article in the astronomy Ireland magazine.

Happy Easter to all.

Astronomy Ireland

Yesterday we had astronomy Ireland come in and talk to Tranisiton Years, first years and also second years. After each astronomy talk we presented s small slide show about our cansat and what wen are doing and that we are advancing on to the next stage.

We have also been working on our website all week and it is nearly completed.

Preparations For Birr

In the last few days we have been researching different things.

We have been looking up how to make our parachute and ordering the materials. What components we need to complete our secondary mission and also today we started on a website to add to our Outreach part of the program. It has not yet been completed but a link will be posted before the end off the week. We plan on doing more work tomorrow on it also and throughout the week.

Qualifying

As we arrived in LIT yesterday the first thing we did was assembled our can and made sure all things were working. Unfortunately we had some difficulties with the program and transmitters but after a while of trying different things to get it working again we final succeeded but we still had the problem of the transmitters not picking up a signal after going a certain distance from each other. We could not fix this fully we could only improve it by making the interval time greater so we just had to explain why there was a break in our results. 

After our can went up into the sky we had to go and work on our presentations inside and get the data from the launch that day and the graphs. We had some trouble withy eh equation to calculate height also. Our team was third to present to the judges and we were extremely nervous. We were called in and thankfully all the nerves dropped as we started to present. We were able to talk to judges without any trouble and answer any questions they had. The judges seemed very impressed with our use of Perspex inside the can, and also our level of teamwork put into then asking of the can. 

Then when we were finished presenting we were allowed to go outside and feast our can again but this time getting let off with a parachute as in the mor img the mechanism was failing to work. It was great to see our can falling from the sky and still working and everything. As we got to see all our hard work put Into the can pay off. We then went inside and got lunch from the people of LIT. 

It was then time for the two advancing teams to be called out. This is when we started to get really nervous. After about ten minutes of talking and thanking people the judges fisnlly announcing the two teams and we were over the moon to hear 'Colaiste Iosaefs The Buccaneers' being called out. We are delighted to be advancing onto the next stage. 

Big thanks to LIT for yesterday. 

Regional Competition

After the regional competition in LIT today we are delighted to announce that we are advancing to the next stage of the competition which takes place in Birr on the 17th of April.

We had a bit of difficulty at the start of the day with our program and our transmitters but it all worked out in the end and our presentation to the judges went very well also so we were thrilled with the results.

Hard luck to the other teams today but best of luck to those advancing to Birr.

Final Preparations

Competition Day Tomorrow! 

With less than 24 hours to go to the competition we are making final preparations to our project and any final touch ups. We hope all the hard work and dedication we have put into the CanSat project pays off tomorrow and impresses the judges. Best of luck to other schools and our fellow classmates who have also entered as Canye SouthWest. :) 

Our Trip to LIT

On Monday the 16th of March,our group went into LIT to meet with some of the people who are organizing the CanSat competition this Thursday the 19th of March.

What we did inside there was talked to people and they gave us advice on the requirements needed for Thursday. We asked questions on the problems we were having regarding our arduino and the electronics of the CanSat. We spent an hour and half in LIT and we feel it was very beneficial to us and we came out out of it with a lot more of an understanding of what we needed to do for Thursday.

Design

For the past week we have been working on our design and what we will be able do for it. We have done drawings after drawings and finally it's starting to come together.

Soldering

Last week we were soldering the two boards together and soldering the pins and plugs onto it. We were let into the metalwork room to do this and we set one member of the team to doing it. Yesterday when we were working on our design for the can and doing the holder for the inside of the can we also started soldering the components onto the motherboard.

Experimenting

The last day we did the experiment to measure temperature and resistance. The purpose of this experiment was to find out what temperature corresponds to what resistance. To do this experiment we needed glycerol, a retort stand, a thermistor, temperature probes and data logging equipment, multimeter, test tube, hot plate, water and crocodile clips. The crocodile clips were connected onto the thermistor and put into the test tube with the water, the temperature probe was also put into the test tube, all data needed was then transferred to data logging equipment. The temperate and the corresponding resistance was then recorded for further reference. We recorded results for the temperature ranging from 0 - 65 degrees.

Programming

Hello all,

On our first day of creating our CanSat project we did all the programming for calculating the resistance and that.

In our group we all have assigned jobs so Rian was the main person doing the programming while we just helped him with what needed to be done. The first day was also the day we came up with our name for the project 'The Buccaneers'. Photos will be posted later on.

The Buccaneers

Hello all,
The Buccaneers is a CanSat Ireland project. What CanSat is, is a science competition where a group of students come together and make a satellite inside a ordinary sized soft drink can. The whole point of the project is to see if the students can build the satellite in the can correctly. The competition will take place on the 19th March 2015 and each groups CanSat project will be let into the sky and will have to perform necessary actions and also land back on the ground safely.

Our group consists of four members : Marian Quaid, Rian Brady, David McMahon and Jessica Murphy. We are a group of transition year students from Colaiste Iosaef, Kilmallck, Limerick.

In the blog we will be posting about what were doing in relation to the project and pictures of our progress.