2022-7-6 Backplane Meeting

Owned by Ben Hyman (RIT Student)
Last updated: Jul 13, 2022 by Yevgeniy Gorbachev (RIT Student)

Date

Attendees


Goals

  • Lay out high-level requirements
  • The modules should be electrically independent

Advantages

  • HITL/SITL testing
  • Breaking out work - fewer people per board, each individual board is simpler
  • Modular

Disadvantages

  • Each board will need an Ethernet chip and microcontroller, adds electrical complexity
  • Physical connectors are physical failure points
  • We have way more hardware people than software people
    • Mitigated by HAL (will is this right?)
  • Requirements can change enough to obsolete parts of the architecture, requiring significant work

Discussion Topics

Protocol

Most protocols other than Ethernet and CAN (I2C, UART, SPI) would reduce to the same thing with extra work or would be too slow.

  • need central shared bus
  • any protocol with a master/slave structure is disadvantageous as it breaks "functional independence"
  • speeeeeeeds

Board Separation

  • 70cm RF is on the GPS board, not the telemetry board, because that's the only use case for 70cm RF
  • Battery board is separate because it's a large failure point and should be very customizable
  • Logging board should listen to literally every other board

Connectors

  • Ribbon cables may make mechanical integration easier

Danger will robinson

  • scope creep can get to us
  • this could get very large and very complicated very quickly
  • important to be diligent in designing for now, not digging ourselves into holes, not making unnecessary modules, etc.

Requirements

  • High level for now - qualitative, not quantitative

Goals by start of AY 2022-23

  • Connector(s) selected
  • Protocol selected
  • Voltages selected
  • Good idea for sensors
  • Good idea for module breakdown
  • Microcontroller selected
  • Requirements enumerated

Action items

  • Sleep on the requirements
  • Think about protocols
  • Think about connectors