Finland's First Satellite – Prototyping Sun Sensor with Arduino

Finland launches her first satellite in 2014. We’re building a prototype of sun sensor with Arduino. Sun sensor is part of the navigation subsystem.
Sun position is measured with tiny Elmos E910.86. Arduino reads these values using SPI protocol and processes them to angles on X and Y axis. When the on board computer (OBC) asks, sun position is delivered using I2C protocol.
Some requirements created extra challenges. For example, there is just 5 mm * 5 mm space for the sensor on satellite surface. The photo on the right shows four of these sensors on my hand.
Aalto-1 satellite is a 30 cm * 10 cm * 10 cm CubeSat. It will be on low earth orbit. Mission video.
I just finished the first prototype with Kimmo Karvinen. You can see some pictures and source code at BotBook.com/satellite.
Read the whole story on BotBook.com/satellite >>>.