Arduino altimeter - dual recovery for less than 20 dollar

Just to give an idea of the size. On the picture my altimeter is in the middle
on the right you have a P6K and on the left an Altimax

Very cool I am on board for a couple of the kits!

great job.. glad to hear that it works.. I will take a few kits too

I have finally received the board for the kit.
I just need to test them to make sur that they work well.
Altimeter kit price will be 15 euros + shipping (between 2 and 3.50 euros depending where you live) + paypal (should be around 2 euros). That is approximatly 20 dollars + shipping + paypal fees
I am not making profit on those and they are only for people who have electronic skills and who want to help improving the altimeter program. I will publish all the code and kit details by the end of the week
For those interested send me a private message, I have a limitted number of kits to start with so it will be 1 alti max per person and on a first in first served basis.
Boris

PM sent

This is what the kit looks like
I have solder my first one today in less than 30 minutes and I am testing it

looks good!

what size mounting holes are those?

Diameter of the mounting holes is 3 mm

bdureau said:

Diameter of the mounting holes is 3 mm

Click to expand...

thank you!

I see terminal blocks for main and apogee labeled on the board. What's the third one for, backup charge?

You have one for the main
one for the apogge
and the last one for the power supply

Ah - That makes sense, especially after re-examining picture 3. Thanks.

PM sent..Time to find the soldering iron!

Working on a web site.

You can already check the documentations fo the altimeter here
https://rocket.payload.free.fr/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2&Itemid=2

Hi All
I have run out of kits, I still have some board but I am waiting for some components to arrive.
I will let you know when I have them available. Hopefully it should be no more than a week or two.
In the mean time you can check my web site where I will publish everything. So far you can downlod the documentations, the altimeter program code etc...
The idea is to get it improved so any comments are welcome.

I've read through the altimeter code, and I'm going to try my hand at a couple of modifications. Nothing major, a slightly modified beepAltitude() function. And I might tackle getting the altitude in feet, instead of meters. I'm not sure I'd actually use that second one, but someone might want it.

I'll have to wait for my board to come in before I can test my ideas out.

Perhaps Mach lockout would be nice.

CarVac said:

Perhaps Mach lockout would be nice.

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That would need an accelerometer, no? Looking at the documentation, this board is baro only.

Mach lockout would be cool for a future version, as would data logging.

rbelknap said:

That would need an accelerometer, no? Looking at the documentation, this board is baro only.

Mach lockout would be cool for a future version, as would data logging.

Click to expand...

No. Mach lockout can be done with a timer after lift-off detection, but you have to set the delay.

Modern barometeric units like the PerfectFlite Stratologger, do it in software. The simplest way is to use a Kalman filter which analyzes the barometeric data in real time and calculates the velocity based on the laws of motion. If the velocity is greater than a baseline value, 400 mph for example, and it receives a sudden pressure transient, it ignore it, bucause the laws of motion don't allow that great a change in the rocket motion...

Bob

Mach lockout would be an excelent idea.
This is exactly why I am publishing the code; to get new ideas...
Data logging is something I am working on with an EEPROM. Obviousely I had to start with something simple....
Whoever has some interresting modifications to the program send them to and I am quite happy to publish them on my website

Nice work Boris

Thanks Leo
Your project gave me the idea.... however it is not as complex as what you did... yet .....

bdureau said:

Whoever has some interresting modifications to the program send them to and I am quite happy to publish them on my website

Click to expand...

I'll definitely send you any code changes I come up with.

Do you have a USB to serial adpater?
You will need to buy one of those (it cost around 3 dollar) de be able to reprogram the kit.

If you have the Arduino UNO board you can also swap the ship to upload the code.

I have both

What do you use as an IDE? Vim? I was looking around and was surprised my fav IDE IntelliJ does not have a plugin for it. Wonder if eclipse does?

arduino has its own ide.

The arduino (which this board is based on) has it's own IDE, which works well enough for the small projects I've messed with, but might be too simplistic if you have another favorite IDE. Yes, I believe there are eclipse plugins for it.


A quick bit of googling returns these links:
https://www.drdobbs.com/embedded-systems/total-eclipse-of-arduino/240143006

https://horrorcoding.altervista.org...e-a-step-by-step-tutorial-to-the-basic-setup/

https://www.baeyens.it/eclipse/

You can do an awful lot with the Arduino IDE, once you get the hang of it. It does definitely have some eccentricities, and some of their functions (like the BEEP function, for example) use an inordinate amount of memory and are better done with a little extra C code. Once you learn where they hide stuff (in the C:/Users/<username>/Local Settings/Temp folder) you can save the build and extract the Intel hex files to build a distribution package. As a basis for a dedicated imbedded system, it's not bad... back in the day I used to do a lot of Motorola assembly and I'd have to program PALs to get the equivalent hardware logic. The Arduino IDE gives you almost instant gratification. The ATMEGA328 is a pretty nice chip, and they're about $2 in decent quantities, which compares favorably with the equivalent PIC processors.

I used the Arduino IDE in the Eggtimer, you can put a lot in 32K if you work at it... see www.eggtimerrocketry.com

Derek said:

arduino has its own ide.

Click to expand...

Way to reinvent the wheel...