Project 01

DemoSat RadTest — Colorado Space Grant Consortium

An Arduino shield PCB built for a NASA-sponsored high-altitude balloon payload — designed, integrated, tested, and flown as part of the Colorado Space Grant Consortium's DemoSat program.

Flown & completed Hardware · Embedded Systems

← Back to Projects

Overview

The Colorado Space Grant Consortium's DemoSat program flies student-built payloads to the edge of space on high-altitude weather balloons. My contribution was an Arduino shield — a prototype PCB that stacks directly onto the payload's flight computer — carrying the sensors and support circuitry the mission needed to characterize the radiation environment during ascent, float, and descent.

The work spanned the full hardware lifecycle: schematic and layout for the shield, sourcing and validating commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) sensors, bringing up the board on the bench, supporting the firmware side of data acquisition, and ultimately verifying the platform held up to mission requirements before flight.

My Role

Designed an Arduino shield PCB prototype for the high-altitude balloon payload.
Integrated and validated COTS sensors for flight-ready operation.
Supported firmware development for on-board sensor data acquisition.
Led system testing, debugging, and hardware integration to meet mission requirements.
Presented design decisions, test results, and radiation-protection recommendations in formal reports and presentations.

Tech Stack

Arduino / C++ PCB Design Sensor Integration High-Altitude Balloon Systems Technical Reporting