Future frozen feathers

Our weekly LIVE video chat. Every Wednesday at 8pm ET!

Moderators: adafruit_support_bill, adafruit

Please be positive and constructive with your questions and comments.
User avatar
aaradaa
 
Posts: 1
Joined: Sat Jun 18, 2016 5:41 am

Re: Future frozen feathers

Post by aaradaa »

Also if I wanted to put a display on it, would the OLED displays you carry break at those low temperatures? The spec sheet that I looked at said operation to -30C and storage to -40C. Would the OLED be damaged and stop working within it's operation specification if I cold-soaked it at the low storage temp while it was powered and trying to operate? Or would just being powered on at those low temperatures create thermal gradients within the display that could mechanically damage it? Or is this unknown and I get to be the guinea pig?

User avatar
hukuzatuna
 
Posts: 118
Joined: Wed Aug 14, 2013 11:40 pm

Re: Future frozen feathers

Post by hukuzatuna »

I do astronomy year round (outdoors, obviously) and have added electric heating to my laptop LCD monitor and keep it in an insulated box to avoid damaging the display (liquid + cold temps = potential damage). I'm not sure of the physical construction of an organic LED, but I would be concerned about the thermal gradient. Would it be possible to put your controller and OLED in an insulated container with an electric heating element, as another poster suggested? I think that would be the safest bet, unless you'd like to be the test subject and just "see what happens." :-)

Incidentally, I did some research into Adafruit components for use in a CubeSat project (now defunct, unfortunately, because of a change in jobs). Definitely not radiation hardened and would be way pushing the envelope of the operating temperatures (-80 to 125 C). I was investigating whether the power budget would allow us to use heated electronics for the "dark side" 45 minute periods, but never got the whole thing figured out. I'll pick up where I left off if I find a funding source. Hey, now that Limor has her Extra license, she could operate one of the ground stations at Adafruit HQ! I bet she'd enjoy controlling a satellite, especially if it contained her designs....

Cheers,
Phil

Locked
Please be positive and constructive with your questions and comments.

Return to “Ask an Engineer! VIDEO CHAT (closed)”