New tracker range test result

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I am aware LSRS in a few days away (I am in Oz so wont be attending). Have been eagerly watching the development and visit the website far to often hoping for “pre order”...

Looking forward to the release..

Thanks for your support. Some status updates:

Beta testing is in progress. We have pushed our first over-the-air software update to the group, and that has gone fine so far.
We're collecting feedback and making improvements to the user interface.
There are some minor bugs and usability issues that pop up when changing settings.
The app is not yet available through the Apple store; the testing has been going on through Apple's TestFlight, which requires us to enter the email address of each user.

Our most recent version includes the background data handling needed to make the over-the-air lost rocket relay work. If the user interface for this isn't available in an update for LDRS, I still plan to do some testing there with a back-door interface to my laptop. Along those lines, I'll have units available for anyone to purchase at LDRS, since I'll be there to provide support in person.
 
My personal opinion about Adrians system is it's going to be absolutely great for someone who wants to find their rocket by following the arrow and not being concerned primarily about "data". In that regard, I bet someone who has never electronically
tracked a rocket would have a great chance from the get-go to find their project. Disclaimer: I'm not a tester but base the above from what I've read and experience with other modalities. Kurt Savegnago
 
My personal opinion about Adrians system is it's going to be absolutely great for someone who wants to find their rocket by following the arrow and not being concerned primarily about "data". In that regard, I bet someone who has never electronically
tracked a rocket would have a great chance from the get-go to find their project. Disclaimer: I'm not a tester but base the above from what I've read and experience with other modalities. Kurt Savegnago

I have used 3 different popular non-license 900MHz style trackers prior to testing this one out. Most of them do their job well and I intend to keep using them. I’m not real sure what “data” you’re referencing but the featherweight trackers seem to have lots of it, if not more than what I’m accustomed to having. Currently the device doesn’t save a log file but that is coming pretty soon. One thing this gives is real-time altitude, velocity, bearing, coordinates, compass style degrees/pointer, data packets sent/received, signal strength, battery voltage of both units and lots of others. You can literally just point your phone at your rocket even if you can’t see it from the TRACK page. If you want coordinates, they will be on the GPS page.

From my testing the Bluetooth connection is almost immediate and I haven’t had one problem with the BT to ground station (GS) connection. It seems very good. The GPS lock on both the tracker (TRK) and the GS is the fastest I’ve ever seen from anything and the LoRa data connection from TRK to GS is near immediate as well.

Physically it’s super impressive. VERY small and robust feeling. I’d opt for the ground station enclosure option once available.

My favorite feature is the over the air updates. You know Adrian and Kevin will be working hard to make improvements and the updating process is simple. Lots of really cool features coming.

I don’t have any reason to pump the product at all but I think it’s a super solid tracking device that will give you all the data, range and tracking ability you could need.

Here is a video of the iPhone screen during a small launch. Probably not real helpful but maybe it will give you a better idea of what it looks like. Keep in mind there has already been 1 update since I made this and sounds like another one coming real soon. It’s evolving quickly.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=CJXJWslLosk&feature=youtu.be
 
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Live mapping is what I'm referring to with the decoding and plotting on a real time map.
Due to the vagaries of radio theory, it is difficult on the low end to recover all the streaming data.
For rocket recovery, in reality it only takes a few points to have a successful recovery. Hence the success seen with all
of the products out there.
I understand the Featherweight tracker will allow access to the data stream for these purposes which I find interesting. Plus its been stated that there is greater than 90% reception of
the data stream and that is simply superior. Kurt
 
Ahh. Like Rocket Track? It’ll be interesting to see if they add something like that one day.

I'm interested to hear what other people are most interested in watching real-time during the flight. For me it's mostly the altitude and vertical velocity, since the vertical velocity will tell you whether the deployments are working. The directional pointers are nice during the flight, too. A map is important, but I'm mostly interested in it after the landing.
 
I'm interested to hear what other people are most interested in watching real-time during the flight. For me it's mostly the altitude and vertical velocity, since the vertical velocity will tell you whether the deployments are working. The directional pointers are nice during the flight, too. A map is important, but I'm mostly interested in it after the landing.

I agree with this whole heartedly!
 
I think Adrian has his priorities straight, tell us what the rocket is doing while in flight, point to where it is, and worry about how to get to it's landing site after it has landed. I'm loving the in-flight data, except when Sharon is announcing altitude in a loud voice as my rocket approaches the waiver.... It got quiet for a bit, but we had no trouble finding the rocket later....
One thing that concerns me is feature creep, and I have mentioned it to Kevin. Everybody has this great idea, and wants it added to the features, but I want to get through the beta testing and make this marvelous device available to all you poor fliers that need it NOW! Yeah, we still have a few bugs that need to be worked out, but let's get through them and get it out to the market. With online updating, can't you add all these other tricky little features later?

As it is, this device does what it was made to do, find your rocket. I've used all four of ours in various different rockets, and continue to recover rockets after each flight. One thing I really like about them, is how easy they are to fit into existing rockets. With a couple of nylon 4-40 stand-offs and a little 1s lipo stuck to the sled, you're in business. I mounted one in with an Eggfinder (much larger) and powered it off the balance plug of the larger lipo that was already mounted in a 54mm polycarbonate N/C. I was stunned how easy it was to find a space on that little sled.

Looking forward to meeting Adrian at LDRS this weekend, I know Sharon is in the market for a couple more units, and I need some more magnetic switches, just don't ask me how many I have now.....


 
I'm interested to hear what other people are most interested in watching real-time during the flight. For me it's mostly the altitude and vertical velocity, since the vertical velocity will tell you whether the deployments are working. The directional pointers are nice during the flight, too. A map is important, but I'm mostly interested in it after the landing.

Same. I like seeing the data during flight. Velocity, altitude, pointers, bearing etc. For post flight some summary page and final coordinates or perhaps a button like you’ve mentioned to copy coordinates for pasting into another app.

I like the direction you’re taking.
 
I'm interested to hear what other people are most interested in watching real-time during the flight. ....<snipped>
As someone who has your system and has done some testing with it I have no real desire to see real time mapping. About the only big change I'd like to see is the Track and GPS pages combined. There is plenty of room to show all the info on one page - (I would put the GPS data below the tracking information). I guess I don't see the value of map data during a flight. If you add the ability to copy the landing GPS info (with a user selectable format) so it can be pasted into the mapping application of my choice, or even something as simple as Google Maps, I think that would add the functionality that most of us need.

Obviously if you add logging data that can be retrieved after the flight for import into something like Google Earth that would satisfy those who like to see 3D plots of their flights.

For the money I think it's a great system. I've shown it to several groups of rocket folks and the response has been uniformly positive. I have several big flights planned for BALLS and I'm counting on this system to make sure I get everything back.

Keep up the good work,


Tony
 
How did the first day of flights go? I&#8217;m needing a pair of these and can&#8217;t wait for them to go on sale.
 
How did the first day of flights go? I&#8217;m needing a pair of these and can&#8217;t wait for them to go on sale.

Yes, I have seen some Apple devices available used on the aftermarket and some economical recommendations for what is necessary on the receiving end would be welcomed.

I make no regrets for stating that I desire tracking on a map. For Midwest flatlanders it's nice to see that ones rocket has landed past a road, stayed away from somebody's house or most likely didn't come down in a lake, road, ditch, somebody's silo, barn or even a big mother oak tree (if photomaps can be used).

Out west, in the middle of nowhere that is not important. A pointer, latitude and longitude is all that's sufficient to find one's rocket. Of course, if one has to manually input the lat/long into another device to navigate, then user error can be an issue. Believe me, make sure you got your units right when transferring data. I've seen two episodes where a flier stuck the wrong units in their hand held GPS and lost their rocket or had to search to high Hades to find their prize.

Some thoughts on radio propagation. Two, three, four or five miles out one is depending on receiving the last known position packet down as low to the ground as possible. The lower to the ground one gets the last known position the better. If the ground footprint of the tracker is good, one will find their rocket. I've tracked on a pure Linux/Xastir systems (really a PITA in the old days), APRSIS32/Windows by using network settings given to me from folks on the APRSIS/32 newsgroup and a really great photomap to see if the rocket landed in the oak tree! and the Android app "GPS Rocket Locator". I haven't had a chance to try the Android app that folks have to look for called, "Rocket Track". "Rocket Track" puts a photomap
on ones device as long as an NMEA stream is coming in from the rocket and internet access is available at the launch site they should be in good shape.. I ran simulations on "Rocket Track" and as long and there was an internet access at ones launch site to paint maps, all was good. By golly it's a photomap too.

Don't get me wrong, I've diddled with fine tuning and getting as much tracking data back as possible with low end tracking systems but if one is a neophyte, they likely won't go wrong with the Featherweight system.

Kurt Savegnago
 
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Seeing the last known location on a topo map is valuable in my case. We’re not allowed to drive off road and our site has a large number of rolling hills. Seeing where it is on a map could easily shorten recovery by hours.
 
Seeing the last known location on a topo map is valuable in my case. We&#8217;re not allowed to drive off road and our site has a large number of rolling hills. Seeing where it is on a map could easily shorten recovery by hours.

Shoot yes! Some years ago when the Android application "GPS Rocket Locator" couldn't cache maps and I was too freak'in cheap to pay for a data card, I went to a Midwest Power and popped up an MD 38mm cardboard/plywood finned rocket that had the fincan 'glassed with 1/3rd, 2/3rds, and full span 2 oz. fiberglass cloth. I even rotated the cloth
45 degrees at the 2/3rds side. Used a "rail guide" that bound on the rail and rocket freak'in destroyed the rail guide. (Note the maker replaced and I be happy)
It was totally my fault as I should'a gone to another pad and used a rail that wasn't so dirty. The rocket went out close to two miles and I didn't have a map.

I triap'se across the field and if I would'a had a "visual" map I would have seen I could have hopped in my car and driven to the rocket, parked along a bridge and walked a few
feet to get it back! As it turned out, I walked over two ditches, got dirty and fortunately got a ride back 'cause I found another fliers GPS equipped rocket!!!
I was freaking bushed after my long walk and was ecstatic when the guys came out to get their GPS tracked project. Gathered mine and their rocket and came home.

Kurt
 
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A form of AR would be interesting - some way to point the phone towards the rocket and have some form of a box of its location.

Would help with those recordings of the flights but other than that not overly useful..
 
A form of AR would be interesting - some way to point the phone towards the rocket and have some form of a box of its location.

Would help with those recordings of the flights but other than that not overly useful..

That isn't hard. Just be aware which way is North on ones screen and which way is north in "real life":wink: Folks who've flown aircraft and learned the "dead-reckoning" method of navigation will have little trouble with reading maps
with respect to rocket tracking.:) Kurt
 
I fly on the east coast. I really like having a map to follow. I have several "eggfinders" , along with the gps enabled handheld unit. The arrow system works great, however, I fly at a field that has VERY large drainage ditches. By using a google map with a gps, I can zig zag and avoid the ditches and drive/walk right to my rocket. This can save a very long walk! As an example, I recently loaned one of my "eggfinders" to another flyer and as we watched his rocket land a couple miles away....very cool flight.....he was disappointed that it was in a large stand of trees. That is, until I plotted the landing site and found out it was on the other side of the trees in another open field! We were able to drive right up to his rocket. It was no more than 10 feet from the farm road.
 
I'm surprised having a map would even be a discussion item. Be a real shame to hike cross country to find it's right next to a road, that's for sure. I would expect it to work much like a decent geocaching app, like Cachly - you can get a "compass" view where it points at the item, see where you are and it is on a map with a line between, or hit another button and it'll pump the end location into Apple Maps. Each interface has advantages and disadvantages depending on distance and if you can realistically drive and if so can you just go cross country or not.
 
A quick tip: If possible, set your tracking app to degrees, decimal degrees being cognizant if a minus sign is needed for longitude.

Set your mapping app to the same units, degrees, decimal degrees. You then minimze the chance for transfer errors when you manually input the last known rocket position into your mapping app to get an idea of the landing site.

The featherweight device is likely going to be put in a lot of small rockets that don't fly very far so live mapping isn't very necessary. (Fly high yeah but
unlikely to drift 5 or more miles away!)

With a live map that has a bread crumb trail, one can observe a drift trend down low which might make an extreme project recovery a lot easier especially if it lands a long ways away. The last known position might be several hundred feet away from the final resting place especially if the rocket lands several miles away and the last known position packet is from several hundred feet in the air. A low level drift trend on a map can be even more helpful if somewhere along the way there is loss of signal. Its easy, just see which direction the rocket is traveling down low (on your live map) and proceeding that direction hopefully to get within the ground footprint of the radio tracker. Remember to put a noise maker on the the harness if at all possible. The ears are best in tall grass.

For those using this in smaller projects, you don't have to worry about this. A simple arrow should be fine and one can always manually transfer the last known latitude and longitude to another device for plotting to get an idea of the surrounding lie.

Maps are great. Photomaps are even better. Ask someone who has used the Android app "Rocket Track" which in spite of it's foibles (ie. needing live internet access for the photomap tiles and sometimes hard to close down) which displays the rocket on a photomap, that's the easiest app out there for someone to do live tracking on a photomap. There are ham radio apps that can be hacked to do this but is too hard for most to achieve. Kurt
 
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It would be nice if this thread stayed focused on the Featherweight tracker and it's features rather than become a generic tracking thread. I don't think folks are coming here to learn about generic trackers and software features. I know thread drift happens but it doesn't have to if folks stay focused.

If someone feels super strongly that a tracker has to have real time mapping, then maybe at this point there are different options out there to look at. Honestly I think it's a waste of a programmers effort to add in a feature that likely won't be nearly as nice as a dedicated app like MotionX. I'd much rather see unique features like public relay, lost rocket mode, ability to track multiple stages, etc., than yet another mapping app.

From someone who has actually spent the money to buy the trackers, I put almost no value on a real time map solution and a lot of value on the existing and other features than have been announced. I've talked to other folks who have also purchased the system or are planning to and none of them mentioned the lack of real time maps.

Kurt keeps talking like this tracker will only be useful for simple recoveries or rockets that won't go very high. I believe just the opposite is true. Based on the technical specifications and early tests, I believe this will become the tracker of choice for those flying extreme projects and want the best odds of getting their rocket back. The beauty of the Featherweight system so far is it's simplicity to set up and the very robust feature set planned. If folks want to mess around with jury-rigging up a custom solution, great, but that should be a different thread.


Tony
 
Maybe my previous post was not clear. I use MotionX as my map. I just want an easy way to move the last known coordinates into that program.
 
How did the first day of flights go? I&#8217;m needing a pair of these and can&#8217;t wait for them to go on sale.


One of our customers had a couple of successful flights yesterday. There will be more people flying them today.

The current status on the release is that the over-the-air software updates for our beta testers have been working, so I'm selling them here at LDRS, to whoever can where I can help people set up them up in person. The iPhone app is still in the beta test phase, so users need to be added through the Apple TestFlight app. There are also some glitches when saving new parameters that can occasionally require an app restart.
 
I agree that having a map view for recovery is a very important feature. As people have said, it's needed for planning your route to the rocket after it lands. Our first implementation for will likely be as simple as pressing a button to copy the coordinates, and then you can paste it into your favorite mapping program.

When the rocket is in the air out of sight and your eyes are on the screen, a live real-time map could be done, but so far we have prioritized the other real-time data, like vertical velocity, real-time pointing, and altitude.
 
I agree that having a map view for recovery is a very important feature. As people have said, it's needed for planning your route to the rocket after it lands. Our first implementation for will likely be as simple as pressing a button to copy the coordinates, and then you can paste it into your favorite mapping program.

When the rocket is in the air out of sight and your eyes are on the screen, a live real-time map could be done, but so far we have prioritized the other real-time data, like vertical velocity, real-time pointing, and altitude.
That sounds GREAT!
 
It would be nice if this thread stayed focused on the Featherweight tracker and it's features rather than become a generic tracking thread. I don't think folks are coming here to learn about generic trackers and software features. I know thread drift happens but it doesn't have to if folks stay focused.

If someone feels super strongly that a tracker has to have real time mapping, then maybe at this point there are different options out there to look at. Honestly I think it's a waste of a programmers effort to add in a feature that likely won't be nearly as nice as a dedicated app like MotionX. I'd much rather see unique features like public relay, lost rocket mode, ability to track multiple stages, etc., than yet another mapping app.

From someone who has actually spent the money to buy the trackers, I put almost no value on a real time map solution and a lot of value on the existing and other features than have been announced. I've talked to other folks who have also purchased the system or are planning to and none of them mentioned the lack of real time maps.

Kurt keeps talking like this tracker will only be useful for simple recoveries or rockets that won't go very high. I believe just the opposite is true. Based on the technical specifications and early tests, I believe this will become the tracker of choice for those flying extreme projects and want the best odds of getting their rocket back. The beauty of the Featherweight system so far is it's simplicity to set up and the very robust feature set planned. If folks want to mess around with jury-rigging up a custom solution, great, but that should be a different thread.


Tony

The specs are very good but the bottom line is when a rocket is tumbling under drogue, antenna polarity changes constantly and depending on ones tracking system, recovery of positions could be intermittant. The LoRa technology is supposed to be excellent but the fact of the matter is if a project drifts out of range there is the risk of a loss depending upon the terrain and the ground footprint of the tracker. I contend that most of you who are going to use the Featherweight project are not going to be going to extremes of altitude nor distance (ie. many tens of thousands of feet and many miles of drifting). In that case, an arrow with lat/long is perfectly fine to find a project.

Now it's great if the developer tests it out West with the radical requirements of the playa in projects that go high and far. Remember, with the salts in the playa the "ground" footprint of a tracker, any tracker is zilch. RDF is a dicey affair unless a rocket comes down within sight out there. Walkie Talkies have lousy range there also I'm told.

Do not mistake me Tony, I am not dissing this. It's small, will have the mesh prospect (which will only make a difference if there are a bunch of other folks flying the same device) and I think will be simple enough for a non-electronic type to put in their rocket to find it. I call that a simple recovery. Note well, it's easy to put a small rocket up out of sight for long periods of time and see none of the events. That's where any functioning GPS tracker shows it's mettle. My Wildman Jr. I've never seen any of the events with flights to 8k (darned J motors!). I call that a simple flight but I've walked right up to it 14 times where obviously the chute events occurred as intended. If the GPS tracker hadn't worked (APRS unit) , it would have been lost years ago.

There's plenty of folks chomping at the bit to buy one of these and I don't think they'll be disappointed map or no map. Especially since they are taking care to make sure the system operates as advertised. Remember, it was supposed to be out by last Christmas! That was the hope. In my opinon getting all the kinks worked out is better than a premature release with a pile of bugs. As far as the "go to" choice for extreme projects define for me "extreme"?
When Tony says it's the device of choice, it may be the device of choice because one doesn't need a Ham license to operate. Every tracker has limitations no matter what. If this is tested to the extreme say like a very long distance
recovery then by golly no one should worry. If 5 to 10 miles out on the playa is a piece o' cake for it then us Midwest flatlanders would have nothing the fear.

If one is going to use a single tracking remedy for really high flights 20k or more, there is a higher risk of loss if their device fails. Keep that in mind. Yes, yes I know there have been plenty of flights a lot higher than 20k with successful
recoveries but that was because the tracker worked. Lose power and it can be a really disheartening experience. Note well, I've been burned a number of times hence my caution and dwelling on given failure modes and ways to deal with them. A live map is one of them but yes is not necessary for all flights.

Thinking about what could happen if one gets to a last known position and there is no rocket in sight nor a signal received can be the difference of salvaging a recovery vs. loss.

Oh remember, if you can stick a noisemaker on the harness that is extra insurance for the terminal phase of your recovery. I once walked up to a small fiberglass rocket that was close but I didn't "see it" in descent. It was black tubed fiberglass that blended in with the black dirt farm field. The chute failed to deploy as it hung in a chute release. I walk up to it as shown on the map and the rocket isn't there! The receiver is beeping away the position and the two icons are on top of each other. I have the right lat/long right. Well stupdhead had to zoom in on the map and I was able to walk closer and do the recovery. If I had put a beeper on the harness, my ears would have made up for my "mapping" mistake.

Also be aware, depending upon the position of the GPS receiver antenna on the rocket tracker in the lie and the number of satellites locked, the position can jump around on the map and hence your lat/long will change on your display.
With a lot of ground vegetation, might be hard to locate even though you seem to be right on top of the rocket. Again, more evidence to use a noisemaker on the harness if at all possible. Kurt
 
I agree that having a map view for recovery is a very important feature. As people have said, it's needed for planning your route to the rocket after it lands. Our first implementation for will likely be as simple as pressing a button to copy the coordinates, and then you can paste it into your favorite mapping program.

When the rocket is in the air out of sight and your eyes are on the screen, a live real-time map could be done, but so far we have prioritized the other real-time data, like vertical velocity, real-time pointing, and altitude.

And that's perfectly fine. Most folks won't need a map anyways. Kurt
 
As others have said, during flight, eyes are up, so map is not important, but audio velocity and altitude would be nice... But at apogee and deployed, then pointer, bearing and map would be very beneficial. Here in Utah our two sites are flat, Bonneville salt flats, the other has dried creek beds and sage brush that rockets could get lost in, so having a map to see where it is would be very beneficial to planning route to rocket. Having to backtrack due to a steep inclined creek bed sucks.

Waiting to buy the GPS units so I can link it with the software and continue to use it. Hellfire is coming up, and would love to try it out on the salt flats! No cert flights planned, but want to put it in a variety of other rockets and see how it performs.
 
The only additional feature I would like is for the app to scream bloody murder if the rocket is coming in ballistic. Don't make my brain have to process the rapid decent, but let me set some threshold like 250 fps (after apogee of course) ahead of time (or have it hard set) to trigger the warning. My apologies if this has already been covered.

That, and availability...take my money!!!!!!!!
 
<snipped>... RDF is a dicey affair unless a rocket comes down within sight out there. Walkie Talkies have lousy range there also I'm told.<snipped>
Kurt,

Just FYI, I've been going to the playa since 2010. I've recovered rockets as far as 4.5 miles away with nothing more than a simple RDF tracker (an old rocket hunter system I bought shortly after I first started flying.) I have only ever used RDF recovery at BALLS (with multiple flights over 20,000') and have never lost a rocket there. And using regular FRS radios we get pretty much the same range as is typical. Plus Adrian has already tracked a rocket to over 100,000 feet at BALLS on the Playa using his system.


Tony
 
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