Programming Arduino to drive LEDs on LEGO LM model based on signals from AGC flying mission

PROGRAMMING THE RCS AND  DESCENT ENGINE CONTROLLER FOR THE LM MODEL

The Descent Propulsion System (DPS) is the engine for the LM landing, while the Reaction Control System (RCS) is a set of thrusters that control rotation and translation of the LM by emitting short bursts out of one or more of the 16 thrusters on the spacecraft.

The DPS is turned on and off by two signals from the AGC, Command Engine On and Command Engine Off. Its initial thrust level is 10% when it is turned on. This gives time for the AGC to move the engine on gimbals to reduce and pitch or roll movement due to off-axis thrust.

The computer then will throttle the engine up and down through its usable range of 10 to 65% or 100%. For technical reasons, it can't run long in the range between 65 and 100. This is implemented with a counter that is incremented or decremented by pulses from the AGC (Increase Thrust and Decrease Thrust signals).

When the counter is 0, the engine is at its minimum 10% thrust level and when the counter reaches 3200 the engine is at 100% thrust. That means that each increment or decrement changes thrust by .028125% but the LED I will be using does not have the granularity to show 3200 steps of brightness with an 8 bit value.

Instead, I will use 18 steps from 10% to 100% brightness. Taking the counter modulo 178 will give me a step number from 0 to 17 which selects from the table of 18 brightness values for the LED I am using.

The two thrust change signals are pulses that add or subtract one from the counter, but limiting it to values no lower than 0 and no higher than 3200. I set up interrupt routines triggered by the rising edge of those two pulses; these routines simply bump the counter up or down by 1.

The main routine monitors the counter modulo 178 and selects the appropriate brightness value accordingly, but only when the new step number has changed. The main routine also turns the engine completely off or switches it on based on the two engine command signals.

RCS jets will illuminate the LED that represents that thruster. A pulse on the RCS jets is a minimum of 13 milliseconds long, so I will set a start time when I illuminate the LED, and won't switch off the light if the control signal becomes LOW unless at least 13 ms has elapsed.

I coded this up and loaded an Arduino Mega 2560. I now plan to whip up a testing circuit using an Arduino Uno to generate various control signals, different durations, and try stepping the engine up and down.

INVESTIGATING ACCESSING THE DOWNLINK TELEMETRY FROM THE AGC

The Apollo Guidance Computer outputs some words of data on the downlink to Mission Control in Houston, which are joined to all the other sensor and biomedical data on the same link. The telemetry circuits in the Apollo spacecraft control the link and request data from the AGC at the appropriate time in the transmission. This data rides on the same microwave (S-band) signal that carries voice and television signals.

Telemetry runs at 51.2 Kbps, high rate, as long as the unified S band link is available. When the spacecraft uses the backup omnidirectional VHF links the data rate is slashed to 1.6Kbps, called low rate. The AGC operates at either rate, controlled by the telemetry system.

The telemetry system sends a pulse on the Start Downlink signal line, followed by a stream of 40 Downlink Sync pulses at the high or low data rate, terminating the session with a pulse on a separate Stop Downlink signal line. Each session, begun with a Start Downlink pulse, occurs at a rate of 50 times per second for high rate and 10 times per second for low rate.

When each Downlink Sync pulse arrives, the AGC sends out another bit by emitting a pulse on Downlink 0 Bit signal line if the data is zero or skipping a pulse if the data value is one. This was chosen so that the stream from an inactive AGC consists of all one bits.

I am thinking of developing a box that will sent the Start, Sync and Stop pulses to the AGC, capturing the bitstream it sends back. Time is extremely limited before I head out for the demonstration tour, but if it is easy to bang this together then I will try.