The Earth Explorer Project

So what did I pick?

I think I am going to go with a single main processor and have a few slave processors. One reason is because I can't find my 68HC12 board that I want to use as a low-level processor.

So I have a Compaq 486/33Mhz board bolted in the Earth Explorer. In addition to the regular processor stuff it also has two serial ports, a printer port and SVGA video built in. It is new enough to handle a fair amout of memory. It came with 12Mb installed. It also has a riser board for the 3 ISA slots it provides. That makes it shorter than a standard ISA type motherboard.


Compaq 486/33 motherboard	Installed motherboard

I have to supply power to make it run. The motherboard needs 5V at about 1.5 amps and +/-12V for the serial ports. I am using -5V instead of -12V because that is the convertor that I had handy. The hardrive, which is a 260Mb unit, needs 5V and 12V.

I already have one ISA slot committed to the wireless network card. It came with a PCMCIA adapter card that I am using. That leaves me with two more slots. So I can use one slot for the Imagenation digitzer card. This will allow me to send a digitized image back to my base station through the wireless network. I will probably need to add another card to give me extra serial ports. Then it will be full. If I need to add more cards then I will need to upgrade to a motherboard with more slots.


WebGear Aviator wireless network	Imagenation CX-100-10 digitizer card

So I want to bolt this togethor as shown in the diagram below.

Initial control architecture


BX24 processor	Vector 2X compass

Breadboarded compass


Laser ranging digitizer	Motorola Oncore GPS

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