Instrument Development Group > Capabilities > Electronic Design

Electronic Design

The Instrument Development Group has extensive electronic design capabilities. Our engineers have experience in the following areas:

  • Analog Design (DC through RF)
  • Digital Design
  • FPGA’s
  • Microcontrollers & DSP’s (Motorola, Atmel, Microchip)
  • A to D converters
  • Communications and networking (RS232/422/485, Modbus, Ethernet, USB)
  • PCB Design (through-hole, surface mount, multilayer)
  • PCB assembly and Test  (through-hole and surface mount)
  • SPICE modelling
  • Electronic packaging
  • Embedded firmware development (C and Assembly)
  • System integration

Communication, Telemetry and Control PCB

This in-house custom control board was designed to provided all the communication. telemetry and control requirements for the new NASA Johnson Space Center Cryo Position Meteorology System that will be used to assess the as-built engineering tolerances of the James Webb Space Telescope.

Communication and Control

It includes the following features:

  • 6 layer board measuring 5″ x 5″
  • Balanced communication lines – 8 mil tracks with pitch
  • Embedded Ethernet switch with 4 external ports
  • On-board environmental monitoring – temperature, pressure, supply voltage & current
  • Power distribution, communication, monitoring and control of 8 peripheral devices
  • Communication bridging from Ethernet to RS232 and RS485
  • System control using the TCP-IP protocol
  • Broadcast telemetry using UDP-IP protocol
  • Ethernet boot-loader to facilitate deployed-system firmware updates

CCD Analog Multiplexer Assembly

This assembly comprised of a CCD sensor cooled with a Joule-Thomson cooler, a low noise analog amplifier board, and an analog multiplexer board. The board stack was designed to plug directly into the CCD cooler assembly.

CCD Stack

It includes the following features:

  • Multiboard, blind mate stack
  • Flight qualified hardware deployed by the JHU Sounding Rocket Program