AstroVianu-AstroPi

We are AstroVianu Team, from "Tudor Vianu" National High School of Computer Science, Bucharest, Romania and we are honored to have participated in the European Astro Pi Challenge 2016-2017. In this repository we included our code that ran, in the final phase of the competition, on the International Space Station on 29/04/2017, from 14:48 to 17:48.
We would like to thank the organizers of this competition for offering us this wonderful chance!

Primary Mission - Human Presence Detection in the ISS Columbus Module

• makes use of the accelerometer, gyroscope, and the humidity sensor
• signals the detection by showing a smiley and winking face on the 8x8 pixel display; when no human is detected, the matrix displays a red sad face

Algorithm Description

• always compares the current pitch, roll, and yaw readings with the ones taken 0.5 seconds ago; if the absolute delta is above a certain constant which we have found empirically, then human presence has been detected
• gets the air humidity readings from the sensor every CALIBRATION_TIME for 60 seconds and calculates their mean (mHum) inside the "calibration()" function; while it is not calibrating, it compares the current humidity level to mHum - if the current reading is more than 4% higher (confidence interval of the sensor), then a human is nearby
• has a global flag, humanPresence, tracking the state of the detection activity, which is equal to one if an astronaut is currently in the module - the calibration subprogram will not run while an astronaut is in the module

Secondary Mission - Magnetic Field Study

Preoccupied with the effects that the geomagnetic reversal might have on Earth's magnetic field and, consequently, on radiation protection, we are grateful for having had the opportunity to study the intensity of the magnetic field within the Astro Pi Challenge.

Data Acquistion Code Description

• measures the magnetic induction (in microteslas), on the three axes, x, y and z, and the direction of North, in degrees, using the incorporated magnetometer
• keeps track of the data from the IMU, to calculate the acceleration.
• creates a table printing for each measurement the said magnetic induction on axes, along with the full timestamp corresponding to the exact time
• provides in the abovementioned table data collected using the environmental sensors (temperature, pressure and humidity), since we would be interested to research more and observe if there are any other parameters that might change