Measured
5 V efficiency sweep
Measured 5 V converter efficiency across the board-load range, peaking at 95.879% at 12.167 W output.
ValidatedMeasured
Flight Computer
Central flight-compute and black-box avionics board for sensing, storage, telemetry, and recovery coordination
Test Engineer
AvionicsEmbedded SystemsRF / Telemetry
Schematic
Browse the exported schematic and design sheets.
Layout
Look through the copper layers and routing.
3D Model
Spin around the board model in 3D.
Design Notes
The reasoning, bring-up, bugs, and test results behind the board.
Project overview
What I worked on
95.9%
Peak 5 V Efficiency
0.1–12.5 W
5 V Load Range
19.8–36.2 mVpp
Measured Ripple
29.84 V VBUS
Rail Start
The main compute and data-recording board in the flight stack. I helped review parts of the design, then owned the bring-up side: power characterization, processor/sensor/interface checks, debugging, and keeping the board usable through subsystem and vehicle integration.
I did not design the whole Flight Computer. My ownership here is the bring-up, test, debugging, and system-validation work, so the page is written from that angle.
Hardware & test evidence
Photos, measurements, and validation
Measured
Regulation & ripple
Measured 5 V regulation and output ripple from 0.1 W through 12.5 W load.
Hardware
Assembled flight computer
The Rev 4 Flight Computer I used for rail characterization, interface checks, and bring-up.
Integration
Integrated avionics stack
Flight Computer running as part of the larger avionics stack during integration.
Test history
Bring-up, validation, and revisions
5 V buck characterization
Measure the 5 V converter across the load range I actually cared about on the board.
- Setup
- Swept an electronic load from 0.1 W to 12.5 W while logging input power, 5 V output, and ripple.
- Expected
- Get a clean baseline for efficiency, regulation, and ripple before moving into integrated testing.
- Measured / observed
- Peak measured efficiency was 95.879% at 12.167 W output / 12.69 W input. Output regulation moved from 4.997 V at 0.1 W to 4.910 V at 12.5 W; measured ripple increased from 19.8 mVpp to 36.2 mVpp across the sweep.
These are measurements only; I am not implying a separate pass/fail ripple limit here.
Power sequencing and load-step bring-up
Watch startup and see how the 5 V rail handles a large load jump.
- Setup
- Monitored the 48 V input, 5 V, and 3.3 V rails during the input ramp and a 1.136 W → 12.5 W step.
- Expected
- Clean startup and recovery without knocking downstream hardware offline.
- Measured / observed
- The 5 V and 3.3 V rails began regulating when VBUS reached 29.84 V. A scope capture was recorded for the 1.136 W → 12.5 W transient and is reserved for the public evidence gallery.
The attached scope captures are the actual rail startup and load-step measurements.
Rev 4 bring-up
Validated
Completed dead-board checks, rail sequencing, converter characterization, processor/sensor/interface checkout, and integrated board operation.
1TOP
2GND
3GND
4BOTTOM