Waterloo Rocketry’s Electrical Standards and Resources document
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This document exists to set out a standard for all the electrical gear (avionics, telemetry, ground support equipment). Changes/revisions are very welcome. All design decisions on mission critical electrical systems should be made with the following four points in mind:
Our electrical stuff needs to work 100% of the time at competition. A lot of work from a lot of people goes into building this rocket, and missing our one launch attempt because of an electrical problem is not acceptable.
Once we leave the bay, all electrical work should be done. Fixing something in the desert requires running a generator in a trailer in 40 degree heat. No one does their best work in 40 degree heat. Any MacGyvered solution you come up with there will be orders of magnitude worse than a proper solution you create in Waterloo, and if you’re in the desert, there are better things you should be spending your time on.
The rest of the team should never be waiting on a fix from us. Electrical stuff should work, and it should work as soon as we need it to. With electrical systems, we have the luxury to make sure they work in advance (the propulsion team does not have this), and we should know all the failure modes and be prepared for them.
We should never be asking another university’s team for gear in the desert. Whether or not we fly should not be at the whim of whether we can find something we could have packed a spare of. If something can break, you should have a spare. If there’s a tool you need, you should have it with you. We bring everything we need; we shouldn’t be asking around for gear.
If you need to decide between whether to follow a guiding principle or a hard rule, follow the principle. As long as your decisions demonstrably don’t violate any of these 4, you’re probably okay.
The information in this document has been split into a number of sub-pages which can be found on the left.