Flight Hardware Tech Specs

[Davespice]

Hi folks, we've just done a blog post that covers the technical specifications of the Astro Pi flight hardware.
There are links to the data sheets for those of you that need them.

http://www.raspberrypi.org/astro-pi-tech-specs/

Any questions, comment below, let me know

[chaosjug]

Is it true, that the interrupt pins of the LSM9DS1 are not connected to any GPIO?

[ShiftPlusOne]

Is it true, that the interrupt pins of the LSM9DS1 are not connected to any GPIO?

Yes, but they are connected to the attiny, so if you need to use them, you can modify the firmware to pass the interrupt to a GPIO pin.

[ryan88]

Yes, but they are connected to the attiny, so if you need to use them, you can modify the firmware to pass the interrupt to a GPIO pin.

I thought that the ATTINY was not programmable by the user? Or does this only apply to the ones going up on the ISS?

[ShiftPlusOne]

Only applies on ISS. Otherwise, avr-gcc and avrdude work great. There are also pads on the bottom you can solder wires to if you want to connect the avr dragon for debug-wire, for example. The source will be released to play around with, of course.

[ChuChuRocket]

Any ETA on when the API documentation will be available?

[ShiftPlusOne]

I don't know of any dates, maybe Dave will chime in on that one. If you would like to start sinking your teeth into it, the following interfaces will be supported (to varying degrees):
https://github.com/richards-tech/RTIMULib

https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentatio ... fs-bus-iio
https://archive.fosdem.org/2012/schedul ... system.pdf
http://wiki.analog.com/software/linux/d ... trig-sysfs

Dave is also working on a python library, which will be used for the mission.

The LED matrix will come up as a framebuffer (8x8 RGB565) and the joystick will be a normal input device.

While developing, we're relying on RTIMULib a fair bit, since it's easy to get started with and great for demos, but the plan is to write IIO drivers to keep things standard and avoid userland drivers.

It's really up to you how you want to talk to these devices, high level libraries, kernel drivers or poke the registers directly.

[Davespice]

Any ETA on when the API documentation will be available?

Hi there, it's already on github here but is currently set to private.
We will publish it along with doc pages describing all the API functions / parameters when the boards start going out the door

Hopefully early April!

[ChuChuRocket]

Nice! Thanks for the info. I don't actually have any projects in mind, I was hoping the API could give me some ideas. I'm slightly too far out of the age range for Tim's mission unfortunately, which is a shame because I was one of the 20 who named it! If there's a future for AstroPi beyond this competition then I'll be the first to throw any ideas I have forward.

[Davespice]

If there's a future for AstroPi beyond this competition then I'll be the first to throw any ideas I have forward.

Funny you should mention that! The Pis will be remaining on the station when Tim comes home in May. We're hopeful that should this competition produce a good level of entries and reach a good number of students then ESA may want to repeat it in another one of its member states. Maybe all of them! Which would be a great outcome for the project.

Any future version of the competition could be run without doing any of the flight qualification work that we're currently doing too, another country just needs to request the reuse of the Astro Pis on orbit.