Controversial Winning@SiswaSat Competition

My life seems to be busy recently. Even though this semester I only carry 11 credits. I wish to fulfill my free time with meaningful jobs. Busy means you are working for your ‘halal’ salary. Thanks to everybody that comment on my first English post. All praises are dedicated to Allah Al- Mighty. Dr. Jowaty asked me to write the next post about the controversial winning in SISWASAT Competition. I feel discomfort to story this sad episode in my life. It does not only in my life, but the whole UPNMSat team. huhu.

My Tag

Last 2 years, when I was the junior generation in UPNMSat team, we joint this SISWASAT competition just for gaining our experience. Surprisingly, we won the best design. This achievement has gained believe among our lecturers to achieve more in the next year competition.

In 2008, I had given the responsibility to lead this team. UPNMSat-02 team consisted of two teams, the real team (6 students) and the shadow team (3 students). Basically, the real team was the registered team (3 senior students and 3 junior students) while the shadow team consisted of 3 senior students. From my view, I saw the great co operation between us in completing this job even though we still had few misunderstanding and conflicts. NO HOME WITHOUT CONFLICT. Hahahh. Sweet memories with you all guys!!

Night Flight Testing: What a struggle?

In this competition, we must develop our own satellite that can fit in soda-can and its weight must not exceed 350 gram. What the challenge?? The satellite is lifted up to altitude 100 meters using the balloon. After that, it will be deployed and parachuted to the ground. During the decent time, we must collect all the telemetry as to accomplish the mission that was stated before. Our UPNMSat-02 is the surveillance satellite. It has the function to record video, capture and enhance image, measure the temperature, define the satellite position (altitude, latitude and longitude) and plot the position on the electronic map. In addition, our satellite is maneuverable by controlling the parafoil string.

Weight measurement@D-Day

On the competition day, we had successfully accomplished our missions. Our primary mission is to collect the data and calculate the satellite's position on board before transmitting to the ground segment while the secondary mission is to provide the maneuver control and doing video surveillance. With the excellent performance on launching day, we are very confident to win this competition. Why not, most of the teams have failed to accomplish their mission due to the technical problem. We successfully calculate the position in real time, record 12 minutes video, capture and enhance images; our parachuted successfully expand and maneuver. What the great day!!!

UPNMSat-02 on flight

The closing and prize giving ceremony was held at the engineering auditorium which was attended by the deputy minister of MOSTI. Many lecturers and even the competitors from other universities had given the confident to us that we were the winner in this competition. I felt very happy and proud. This is not over confident I tell you!

There were 5 awards which were the 1st, 2nd, 3rd place, best design, best team and best mission award. The prize giving ceremony started with the best mission award. We missed it. Then, the best team award, we also missed it. When the best design award is announced, our team's name was announced. I felt a little frustrated because of one team normally deserve one award, which was my hypothesis. Inside my heart, I hope that we can still grab the first place. The ceremony proceeds with the 3rd place award. It went to team that performed very badly in the launching day (the circuit board burnt, parachute not expanded and no data to analyze at all). At that moment, it lighted up my hope again. If this standard of team can deserve the 3rd place, we should deserve better. When the second place award was announced, it went to the favorite team that will win this contest. This team is the nearest challenge to us to win this competition, but, they had hard luck because of their delay start due to circuit failure. They experienced 20 marks of penalty. In my mind, I felt more confident. The team that gave the nearest challenge deserved the second place... It will be the great moment after this…

The Sophisticated Ground Station

Before the 1st place award was announced, I felt there was no other team deserves that place except us. Many eyes stared at us and their smiles really made me felt like at the top of the world. My friend and I have already plan how to take the prize (What the confident!!). However, it was already fate to us that we were not the 1st place team. The announcement from the MC was totally destroyed my dream and imagination. We were not the winner. I felt very frustrated. Many lecturers and other competitors have calmed us down. “Very hard luck lah you all" “You deserve to be a winner actually" Only God knows how my feeling at that moment.

Best Design Award for two years... Congratulations guys!!!

After the ceremony ended, my team mates expressed their frustration to me. They deserved to feel like that because of their full-heart efforts (late night return from lab, a lot of flight testing, coding the software, troubleshoots with device and many more). As the solution, we asked the judge for the reason. However, the reasons given were not so concrete. The reasons made us angrier. I didn't feel that, the team that won the first prize deserves theirs. (They don’t even expect they won this competition). Their team failed to accomplish their mission, sensor failure, wrong coding, parachute not successfully expanded.

Don't do this even though you're in tense.. hahah

Here are the reasons given by the judge:

1.We use the inappropriate technical device to supply power to one of the sensor that can cause the error in reading. For me, yes, we can accept this mistake, but then, this case is not worse than the team that didn't have any data to analyze (i.e. burnt circuit) and yet they won the place. Instead, we have the data and we processed it successfully. The judge back team up because of they scored lot of marks in preliminary stage. I don’t even agree with this point because 80% marks was given on the launching day while only 20% marks was given in preliminary stage.

2. We don’t analyze the data. This is even the point that makes us angry. We process the data to calculate the position and then we analyze and enhance the image that has been captured. Yes, we don’t have the data in graph like latitude vs longitude and so on. But for me, surveillance satellite will emphasize on the image analysis. That is why we focus on zooming, interpolation, contrast and many more. I felt so upset when the judge said the marks were more on displaying the graphs. To plot the graph is so easy, just type "plot (x_data,y_data)" in Matlab command and then it will pop up the graph. It is nonsense to just display it without discuss the meaning of that graph. We were the only team that showed to the judges the sensor calibration using Matlab in real time. I felt so upset when those judge use this point as the reason why we lost the place.

3. Lack of communication skill. We do accept our presenting skill is considered 'poor'. But for me, the message that we want to deliver to the audience is clear. Grammatical and some mispronounce of words happen in the final presentation. I did ask the understanding of the audience after the final presentation. Then they totally understand what we meant.

That day was very disappointed day. But, I felt that my team has achieved something great. Frankly speaking, we manage to clinch 1st place, best design, best team and best mission award that worth RM7000.Even though the judges think we don’t deserve it, but, people also make their own judgment. The right analogy is like this. You score 5-0 in one football match, and then the zero-scored team wins that match. hahaha.. Cool Muadz...

UPNMSat-02 Crews: Great Day..Great Performance...

Okeylah, actually, this is very sensitive thing that I finally write in my blog. Anyway, I would like to thanks ANGKASA which has successfully organize this prestigious competition. Please make the post-portem to all the weaknesses. We, UPNMSat team really appreciate all advises and new knowledge’s given by the judges, we plan to improve our next generation of UPNMSat’s prototype. Good luck to our juniors that have the responsibility to upgrade and improve our prototype. See you on the next SISWASAT Competition with the new model of our satellite, UPNMSat-03. All the best to UPNMSat crews!