Thanks for the update. This is going to be one sweet gps system. I bet you get swamped with orders once it is commercial. Anyhow, Im all in on this one!
New tracker range test result
- Thread starter Adrian A
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Kevin and I have been emailing each other today, trying to co-ordinate our schedules so we have some time to fit his GPS into a couple of my rockets. We will be meeting tomorrow at the TRA/PHX launch to see what will work. I'm hoping there is room in the N/C of my Mongoose 75, which already has an Eggfinder in it. Last flight with this rocket made 28,905 ft. with an M840. Hoping to get a bit more with an M685 moon burner on Saturday.
Looking forward to seeing how his system integrates with my iPhone.
Looking forward to seeing how his system integrates with my iPhone.
Right is more important than Right Now. Thanks for the update, and good luck on the tests this weekend.
I sure hope you are anticipating the large demand for these when you make the first production run. This is a very exciting development for the hobby!
NikeMikey
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I am looking forward to it! Have a St. Paddy Day launch that I would love to have it for!
Nice, Wayne!
I've also been in touch with Kevin and will hopefully be flying one this weekend.
See you guys at Eagle Eye!
Dad Man Walking
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How high was the Eggfinder good for (and what types of antennas were you using)?
If you can fly with both in the rocket (EF and T3) that would be a sweet comparison. Kurt
I just opened up the N/C on the Mongoose 75, and it looks like there is plenty of room for an additional GPS. I thought the T3 was the new Missleworks GPS, Im not sure what Adrian is calling his new unit, but it should easily fit on the sled with the EF. We also have a couple of 3 Darkstars with the same N/C sled, so we might get several flights with this new system this weekend.
I dont think we have found the limit on the Eggfinder, it did great on that flight to 28,905 ft. I have dozens of flights with these, and loosing lock while under thrust with a fast motor is the only problem I have had, and even then it gets it back before apogee. Using the stubby rubber duck on the TX and the longer one on the RX.
Hey Scott! We are on site now, with a light 5 to 10 mph wind. I brought my Mongoose 54 with the Max-Q fincan for its first flight since we blew the hole in the old one. I am NOT gonna fly it on the Loki L2050, it needs a few flights in this world before I go crazy with it.
Really looking forward to seeing you!
I'm very interested in this system too, though I will wait for Android capabilities before purchasing. Right now I have several trackers including Eggtimer, Big Red Bee, TrackSoar (APRS), and even a couple of simple 2 meter trackers that beep, and transmit my call sign. (N1LF)
This one sounds like the one to beat. Very excited!
This one sounds like the one to beat. Very excited!
It's the Featherweight GPS Tracker. If I went with the avian theme, "Homing Pigeon" might be appropriate but doesn't quite have that impressive ring to it...
Call it the Falcon. It is for hunting down birds after all.
And they always come back to their owner...
HEY! I like that name.
Mounting these is easy. I took about an hour and now have one in my Mongoose 75 and my Darkstar. Sharon installed one in her Darkstar. I will try to get pic’s later.
Or the Peregrine. They are the fastest of the raptors and with the small size and weight of this tracker it should allow for use in very small high performance rockets. I know several of us who hope to use one in a Mongoose 38 with a Loki K627.
The Kestrel is the smallest US raptor, while (I believe) the Falconet is the smallest falcon in the world (weighs under 2 ounces). I know there are lots of products named Kestrel so maybe not the best choice. Falconet definitely sounds diminutive so it does communicate the size of the tracker.
Really looking forward to hearing about the flights.
Tony
PS: I'm sure Adrian was just waiting for us to chime in with our naming choices!
The Kestrel is the smallest US raptor, while (I believe) the Falconet is the smallest falcon in the world (weighs under 2 ounces). I know there are lots of products named Kestrel so maybe not the best choice. Falconet definitely sounds diminutive so it does communicate the size of the tracker.
Really looking forward to hearing about the flights.
Tony
PS: I'm sure Adrian was just waiting for us to chime in with our naming choices!
I had the privilege of testing a unit this weekend as well as seeing it in action on a few flights. It's seriously tiny, easy to mount and easy to use. The iPhone app is awesome. There's a real-time pointer for horizontal guidance and a bubble level type indicator for vertical guidance, allowing you to point the phone directly at your rocket to help getting a visual. Pretty cool!
The rocket my test unit was riding in had a little mishap, however-
It'll buff out.
The rocket my test unit was riding in had a little mishap, however-
It'll buff out.
We had better luck than Scott, three flights with three recoveries. Two were in 3" Darkstars and the big flight in the Mongoose 75. Kevin burned the midnight oil Friday night, getting everything working for Saturdays flights. Our first two flights in the Darkstars worked great. I really like to get readouts for altitude and velocity during boost and descent. Easy to follow the arrow to your rocket. The distance readout is handy for planning the recovery, but if they can get it to show up on Google maps, that would be the hot setup.
There are still some glitches to work out, but Kevin is working his way through them, and seems to have everything well in hand.
Our last flight had a problem, but we worked through it and managed to find my Mongoose 75 over four miles away.
We WILL be adding these to our fleet!
There are still some glitches to work out, but Kevin is working his way through them, and seems to have everything well in hand.
Our last flight had a problem, but we worked through it and managed to find my Mongoose 75 over four miles away.
We WILL be adding these to our fleet!
Great to hear these reports. Bummer about the mishap, may take some extra solder to get that working again. And a four mile recovery is a pretty good haul, any extra details on any of the flights would be great.
Tony
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My vote a long time ago was The Merlin because it works like PFM... and a Merlin is also a type of falcon. :smile:
A quick google now tells me there is already a different product which would be a naming conflict... As Adrian said - it's the Featherweight GPS Tracker :smile:
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I'll try to work on a summary but will quickly explain the 'glitches'.
1- the work on adding the feature so that a user can scroll through multiple rockets on the field (their own rockets and other FW rockets) and then switch to which one they were listening to was causing me problems Friday night so I went back and focused on the one ground station / one tracker case. Was back to normal behavior by midnight Friday night. Interestingly enough, the single ground station (GS) and multiple trackers then did work for Wayne as he could scroll between his own rockets that were paired with his phone. The feature will work nicely as Adrian finishes up the coordination channel work. Since everyone gets to name their rocket tracker (11 char max) and that gets communicated to other ground stations, then you will have a list of your own rockets (at the top) and then any other rockets that are active on the range. Wayne's rocket was the "wcMongoose" for example.
2- I woke up at 4am and realized that if your rocket landed and it lost reception (normally happens on the ground at any reasonable distance) and you then closed the iPhone app, then the location was lost. I added an option that the last location is saved for the user so restarting the app kept the last location. [This save option will later be improved to save the entire flight data so you can email it to yourself. I wish I had that already as it would make this summary easier to write... :smile: ]
For the biggest glitch, I have a simple fix that will also be a feature when complete... After Sharon and Wayne had two successful flights over 11k and I went along for retrieval, Wayne flew his M685 / Mongoose to over 26K that subsequently came down ~4 miles away. I figured they now knew what was going on and stayed behind to help Scott Hertel prep his rocket for flight. Well, as Sharon and Wayne were going out to get their rocket, we believe somehow the cell phone lost contact with the ground station which resulted in their location not being updated (the phone currently uses the GPS location in the GS (ground station) for 'your current location'). So it was basically behaving as if they were still standing at the launch area - but the directional arrows would still move as they moved making it look like it was working - but the 'distance to rocket' was staying at the 4 mile range even when they were close to the rocket... They said they had reset the GS but they had not restarted the phone app at all. Restarting the phone app likely would have fixed the problem - and at least would have let them know they were no longer connected to the GS. Wayne said that whenever he has problems with the EggFinder, he would reset both the Android app and EF ground station. He didn't think of that for the iFIP app. So I am happy that they were still flying the EggFinder as it helped them find it when they were four miles away. Otherwise, they would have likely returned to camp, we'd get it re-paired and then have to go back out again with a working GS/phone pair.
The fix for this last big glitch is pretty simple 1) make it really, REALLY obvious whether you have contact to the GS - AND - if not connected, switch to using the phone GPS for tracking. This later part can now become a feature. Say a flier only buys a tracker. For a flight, they could pair their phone with someones GS and track their rocket. If they were ok with having only the last location transmitted (just before it lands usually), then they could then unpair from the GS and walk out to their rocket using only their phone GPS to guide them (like going to a waypoint). It also may allow us later to decide if an extra GPS in the ground station is really necessary - or whether to just use the phone GPS... (and reduce the cost of the GS).
I have some videos of the screen shots of the app during use that I will figure out how post. I will say I have one screen where I laid out the two GPS signals left/right and used back ground color of the areas to make sure I was aligning everything ok... this is my up front apologies for the color choice at the time - which was not intended to make it to production... :smile:
As a side note to above, the Featherweight GPS Tracker flew on 5 flights. Three flights were with EggFinders inches away, One with an APRS tracker inches away and one by itself. In all cases they all worked for flight tracking. For the one that Scott posted the picture of the parts above, the last packet was from 2k feet up as it came in ballistic. we went the the last packet location and calculated it should be another. ~100 feet and you could see the fin can and the impact point immediately.
/kjs
1- the work on adding the feature so that a user can scroll through multiple rockets on the field (their own rockets and other FW rockets) and then switch to which one they were listening to was causing me problems Friday night so I went back and focused on the one ground station / one tracker case. Was back to normal behavior by midnight Friday night. Interestingly enough, the single ground station (GS) and multiple trackers then did work for Wayne as he could scroll between his own rockets that were paired with his phone. The feature will work nicely as Adrian finishes up the coordination channel work. Since everyone gets to name their rocket tracker (11 char max) and that gets communicated to other ground stations, then you will have a list of your own rockets (at the top) and then any other rockets that are active on the range. Wayne's rocket was the "wcMongoose" for example.
2- I woke up at 4am and realized that if your rocket landed and it lost reception (normally happens on the ground at any reasonable distance) and you then closed the iPhone app, then the location was lost. I added an option that the last location is saved for the user so restarting the app kept the last location. [This save option will later be improved to save the entire flight data so you can email it to yourself. I wish I had that already as it would make this summary easier to write... :smile: ]
For the biggest glitch, I have a simple fix that will also be a feature when complete... After Sharon and Wayne had two successful flights over 11k and I went along for retrieval, Wayne flew his M685 / Mongoose to over 26K that subsequently came down ~4 miles away. I figured they now knew what was going on and stayed behind to help Scott Hertel prep his rocket for flight. Well, as Sharon and Wayne were going out to get their rocket, we believe somehow the cell phone lost contact with the ground station which resulted in their location not being updated (the phone currently uses the GPS location in the GS (ground station) for 'your current location'). So it was basically behaving as if they were still standing at the launch area - but the directional arrows would still move as they moved making it look like it was working - but the 'distance to rocket' was staying at the 4 mile range even when they were close to the rocket... They said they had reset the GS but they had not restarted the phone app at all. Restarting the phone app likely would have fixed the problem - and at least would have let them know they were no longer connected to the GS. Wayne said that whenever he has problems with the EggFinder, he would reset both the Android app and EF ground station. He didn't think of that for the iFIP app. So I am happy that they were still flying the EggFinder as it helped them find it when they were four miles away. Otherwise, they would have likely returned to camp, we'd get it re-paired and then have to go back out again with a working GS/phone pair.
The fix for this last big glitch is pretty simple 1) make it really, REALLY obvious whether you have contact to the GS - AND - if not connected, switch to using the phone GPS for tracking. This later part can now become a feature. Say a flier only buys a tracker. For a flight, they could pair their phone with someones GS and track their rocket. If they were ok with having only the last location transmitted (just before it lands usually), then they could then unpair from the GS and walk out to their rocket using only their phone GPS to guide them (like going to a waypoint). It also may allow us later to decide if an extra GPS in the ground station is really necessary - or whether to just use the phone GPS... (and reduce the cost of the GS).
I have some videos of the screen shots of the app during use that I will figure out how post. I will say I have one screen where I laid out the two GPS signals left/right and used back ground color of the areas to make sure I was aligning everything ok... this is my up front apologies for the color choice at the time - which was not intended to make it to production... :smile:
As a side note to above, the Featherweight GPS Tracker flew on 5 flights. Three flights were with EggFinders inches away, One with an APRS tracker inches away and one by itself. In all cases they all worked for flight tracking. For the one that Scott posted the picture of the parts above, the last packet was from 2k feet up as it came in ballistic. we went the the last packet location and calculated it should be another. ~100 feet and you could see the fin can and the impact point immediately.
/kjs
What is it like 260 dollars? Its not that bad. Kurt
Any idea on the timetable for an Android version of the software? I want this tracker. Take my money! 
Here are some test flight screen shot videos from last weekend. First is a nice clean flight to 11,800 feet, that was tracking all the way up and down. At the end you can see some GPS signals strength data (to be converted into a bar graph on the to-do list)
[YOUTUBE]N3ht-Go9w_4[/YOUTUBE]
Next up is a flight to 26,700 feet that landed about 4 miles away:
[YOUTUBE]FzdTcJHyPXU[/YOUTUBE]
[YOUTUBE]N3ht-Go9w_4[/YOUTUBE]
Next up is a flight to 26,700 feet that landed about 4 miles away:
[YOUTUBE]FzdTcJHyPXU[/YOUTUBE]
viciouspeanut
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I need this. First fracker that checks all my wish list, can't wait to order one. Will be in my L2 bird for sure.
Great data Adrian, this is the first time I have seen it, and obviously I need to remove the pocket drogue on my Mongoose 75. That carbon fiber rocket drifted quite a ways South while under drogue. Driving over 4 miles on a washed out desert road in a new truck did not make Sharon happy, and the hike in to the rocket wore us all out.
The rough terrain may have been a factor when we lost contact with the ground station too.
The rough terrain may have been a factor when we lost contact with the ground station too.
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Some comments about the app and these screen shots...
1- the 'level indicator / bubble' on the left and the arrow at the top help you point your phone at the rocket. On the pad, the elevation is 0 degrees so the bubble is at the bottom, and if you point your phone at the rocket, the arrow should be pointed there. If you turn away, the arrow moves and points to indicate where the rocket is.
2- After liftoff, the black circle of the level/bubble will move up the screen to correspond to elevation to stay pointed at the rocket. The solid circle represents your phone 'elevation' (tilt). if you move your phone to put the solid circle in the black circle, then you are pointed at the elevation of the rocket. The solid circle goes green if you are +/- five degrees of the rocket.
3- the arrow at the top tells you left/right for the rocket... on the ground, if the rocket is to your left, it will be pointing left. In the air, it tells you direction to be looking for the rocket.
4- the combined effect of the previous three is that you have a simple display that lets you point your phone to where in the sky the rocket is - regardless of whether you can see it yet. No more "does anyone see a main?" question with everyone looking in different directions...
5- The yellow/pinkish color was really there just to help me layout the left frame and right frame. I forgot to remove them before taking the video...
6- Both videos start with the rocket on the pad. when the VertV goes bonkers you have lift off (and see that I don't respond as quickly to where the rocket is because I'm watching the rocket and not my phone... :smile
7- The GPS may have a hard time tracking right after launch but picks it up while still under thrust (vertV is visibly increasing).
8- On the 26k flight, it apparently lost some lock and / or packets between 6k and 24k.
9- you can see apogee by the VertV going negative. Under drogue is usually < ~100 fps from the flights I have seen. if you reach 200 fps quickly, then you'll be coming hot... the one that had no deployment maxed out at around 500+ fps.
I'm going to add recording of this data so you can save your flight data and then likely use that to add voice 'callouts' (launch, altitude, apogee, descent rate, etc). Hooked to a blue tooth speaker, it should make a good 'announcer' for the crowd.
1- the 'level indicator / bubble' on the left and the arrow at the top help you point your phone at the rocket. On the pad, the elevation is 0 degrees so the bubble is at the bottom, and if you point your phone at the rocket, the arrow should be pointed there. If you turn away, the arrow moves and points to indicate where the rocket is.
2- After liftoff, the black circle of the level/bubble will move up the screen to correspond to elevation to stay pointed at the rocket. The solid circle represents your phone 'elevation' (tilt). if you move your phone to put the solid circle in the black circle, then you are pointed at the elevation of the rocket. The solid circle goes green if you are +/- five degrees of the rocket.
3- the arrow at the top tells you left/right for the rocket... on the ground, if the rocket is to your left, it will be pointing left. In the air, it tells you direction to be looking for the rocket.
4- the combined effect of the previous three is that you have a simple display that lets you point your phone to where in the sky the rocket is - regardless of whether you can see it yet. No more "does anyone see a main?" question with everyone looking in different directions...
5- The yellow/pinkish color was really there just to help me layout the left frame and right frame. I forgot to remove them before taking the video...
6- Both videos start with the rocket on the pad. when the VertV goes bonkers you have lift off (and see that I don't respond as quickly to where the rocket is because I'm watching the rocket and not my phone... :smile
7- The GPS may have a hard time tracking right after launch but picks it up while still under thrust (vertV is visibly increasing).
8- On the 26k flight, it apparently lost some lock and / or packets between 6k and 24k.
9- you can see apogee by the VertV going negative. Under drogue is usually < ~100 fps from the flights I have seen. if you reach 200 fps quickly, then you'll be coming hot... the one that had no deployment maxed out at around 500+ fps.
I'm going to add recording of this data so you can save your flight data and then likely use that to add voice 'callouts' (launch, altitude, apogee, descent rate, etc). Hooked to a blue tooth speaker, it should make a good 'announcer' for the crowd.
woferry
Well-Known Member
Really looking forward to having one of these.
So is the altitude purely from the GPS, or does the board also have a baro sensor or accelerometer?
Next you need to control a camera mount to track the rocket during the flight (for a camera with a good zoom, not just the phone).
So is the altitude purely from the GPS, or does the board also have a baro sensor or accelerometer?
Next you need to control a camera mount to track the rocket during the flight (for a camera with a good zoom, not just the phone).
You could use the same functionality to keep a directional antenna pointed at the bird. That would improve the S/N ratio during high flights. Might be a bit tricky under boost!
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Really looking forward to having one of these.
So is the altitude purely from the GPS, or does the board also have a baro sensor or accelerometer?
Next you need to control a camera mount to track the rocket during the flight (for a camera with a good zoom, not just the phone).
The altitude is a delta between the GPS in the tracker and the GPS in the ground station.
I've actually thought of that camera mount - I could likely do the software but need some hardware help what type of motors, gears, etc... probably can buy something mostly there but it is outside my normal zone...
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And yes also, basically you could keep anything (antenna, camera, etc) pointed at the rocket - and with a good zoom on the camera would be able to capture things you wouldn't normally see...
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