The McGill Rocket Team (MRT) is a completely student run design team, focused on designing and launching a hybrid engine rocket. I joined the Flight Computer Software project in my first year at the university, and quickly gained an interest in the work. My first project was fixing a timing issue with an I2C bus. I then worked with another member to implement drivers for new acceleration, temperature, and pressure sensors.
I was then elected by the team captains to become the new project lead in May 2024. Our planned launch was late August 2024 (at the Launch Canada competition), and I worked throughout the summer to get the system ready for launch. In this time, I re-designed the system to use FreeRTOS and concurrent programming techniques (mutexes, queues, threads, etc.). I also implemented new commands to interface with the propulsion, radio, and payload systems over CAN buses, exhaustively tested a new SD card driver, and implemented a driver for a new video recorder inside the rocket. Although the rocket ultimately didn’t fly (due to a faulty fuel valve), the software system worked throughout the testing and various launch attempts. After the competition, I designed the new software system architecture, trained new members, and managed my team of around 8-9 people. I hosted weekly meetings along with work sessions and social events such as hackathons and team wide BBQs.
C/C++, embedded systems, STM32HAL, STM32CubeIDE, VSCode, Vim, RTOS, CppUTest
I had almost no experience writing C code before joining the team. However, I quickly developed a strong interest in C and embedded systems, completing the training documents in under a month (the rest of the team took nearly two and a half months). Throughout the year, I worked with sensor communication over I2C, SPI, and UART, as well as other subsystems over the CAN bus. Additionally, I transitioned our sequential system to a concurrent one, utilizing the FreeRTOS framework and concurrent programming techniques. In terms of non-technical skills, I wrote documentation files, test reports, and design reports to the team.