Overview
    The S4V vehicle serves to introduce our team to the true flight characteristics of the design. Besides providing location, atitiude, altitude and course correction information the system records the commands and responses for later review.
    The Avionics system is custom and uses many of the components found in comercial-off- the-shelf (COTS) model aircraft designs. COTS model avionics are not an option for the Canyon Space Team since this system must mature to the final design. The COTS components available for private and commuter aircraft such as Flight Management Computers (FMC), Control and Display Units (CDU), Navigation Computer, Data Links, Signal Conditioners etceteras, will be integrated into the system with the development of one-third and full scale vehicles.

Specifics
    The chosen data exchange format for the S4V will be discrete and a pseudo ARINC 629 serial interface. ARINC 629 message labels will be carried over USB at 1.5MHz internally rather than the specified 2MHz twisted pair of ARINC 629.
    The system contains four accelerometer boards, which each carry a coarse and a fine resolution dual-axis accelerometer. These accelerometers provide acceleration information from the end of each wing, the nose and the centerline aft of CG. This information is sent to a central processor - the FMC - where accelerations are translated as linear motion and as angular motion. This array creates a rate gyro system with local gravity providing a reference.
    The central processor is capable of providing upto eight individual pulse width modulated (PWM), or four paired PWM outputs for control of flight control surfaces. When under FMC management these PWM signals will control the vehicle flight. Control can be commanded to radio control in which case an RC operator will fly the vehicle.
    On-board RAM records raw accelerometer data, the translated linear and angular data and the resulting PWM response. This is uploaded post-flight for flight analysis.