Overview

Audience: TODO

WARG is looking to purchase a new laptop for F24 onwards.

Requirements

What the laptop is going to be used for.

The biggest requirement is that it’ll be used for the ground station, so it needs to have a bright screen, long battery life, and be durable.

Use case	Subteam	Software
Ground station	All	Mission Planner IMACS 2.0 Pathing
Electrical development	Electrical	Altium
Mechanical development	Mechanical	Solidworks


~~Groundside compute~~	~~Autonomy~~	~~Airside system~~

How the laptop will fulfill the above requirements.

Property	Requirement	Reason
Operating System	Windows	Mission Planner is Windows only.
CPU		i7 gen >= 10
GPU		ideally a discrete GPU, not mandatory
RAM	>=16GB	8GB is not enough, we can always buy RAM sticks to upgrade though
Storage	>=256 GB	We can back up stuff to external drives
IO	TODO: USB-A, USB-C, HDMI, Ethernet, SD card, microSD card??? USB-C and USB-A is mandatory	You remembered to bring the dongle, right? No? Crap. We have SD card adapters, not sure about HDMI to USB or USB-A to USB-C

Screen brightness	ideally 400 nits	Ground station is outside, potentially in the sun. (for reference M2 Air is 500 nits and it’s really bright, lower than 350 is not visible in the sun)
Screen size
Touch Screen	no
Battery life Please note that a manufacturer’s advertized battery life is a lie, so divide their number by 3 when comparing to this requirement Most of the other requirements trade off with battery life (e.g. more powerful GPU will drain it faster, brighter screen will drain it faster)	>= 3 hours This requirement can be dropped if a large external battery is purchased	Ground station may not have access to power during flight tests. flight tests rarely go longer than 2 iirc and comp flight windows (even stretched) is max 1 hour
Weight	Not too important	light is better but low prio
Durability	Survive regular transportation to non city environments	Ground station is outside.
Expected lifespan	3-5 years is standard for a laptop (we’ll probably end up using it for longer)