Nathan Cheek

Ah the dreaded blank speedometer issue. It plagues many 2nd gen Prius owners, and I was no exception. Basically, sometimes the Prius’s “combination meter” - the device that includes the speedometer and fuel tank level - doesn’t turn on. It affects other parts of the car too. For example, some information goes missing on the touchscreen, the backup camera doesn’t work, and sometimes you can’t even turn the car off!

It’s caused by a specific capacitor degrading. The temporary solution is to disconnect and reconnect the 12V battery in the back of the car. This usually works for a while, but is very annoying. And it seems to be more frequent in the winter, probably due to the cold weather causing the capacitor to exhibit lower capacitance.

The Lunar Flashlight Systems Integration and Test (I&T) campaign began back in 2018 at JPL. I joined this team in spring 2021, and followed the spacecraft from Pasadena to Atlanta where the solar panels and propulsion system were installed. After assembling the spacecraft, we took it through a series of environmental tests prior to fueling. The steps of our I&T campaign are detailed in a new paper, published as part of this year’s Small Satellite Conference proceedings. It can be found at this link.

After working on the Lunar Flashlight mission for about 2 years, I’m excited to have a paper in this year’s Small Satellite Conference proceedings. It details the propulsion system’s controller development including design and test campaigns, and is accessible here.

As I graduated this month, Georgia Tech’s school of Aerospace Engineering interviewed me about my time at Georgia Tech including my work over the past 16 months on JPL’s Lunar Flashlight mission. It is available here as well as below.

As a user of EAGLE for a number of years, I’ve often run into its limitations. This summer, I was trying to design an odd-shaped board and I realized there was no good way to do so within EAGLE.

I was hoping for some way of drawing bezier curves, but EAGLE only offers straight lines and arcs for drawing board outlines. I looked into EAGLE User Language Programs (ULPs) and ended up writing a program capable of drawing complicated shapes within EAGLE, utilizing EAGLE’s built-in bitmap ULP.