Next Gen Altimeters from Jolly Logic

I have 3 of the older style and have never had them turn off. about 25 flights using them so far.

mikec said:

I was a little surprised to see that it doesn't have a conventional on/off switch like the Estes, but relies on a quick press of the slightly-recessed single button to turn it on and offi. I presume that no one has experienced having the unit turn off in flight unexpectedly? I also presume that this doesn't consume a noticeable amount of power while off.

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In fact, they don't use any power while off. The older Jolly Logic altimeters did consume a slight amount of sleep current while off, but not these new ones. When you click the button, it sends a signal to the microcontroller which decides what to do. If you're under acceleration, it does nothing. Otherwise, it releases a MOSFET and disconnects the battery completely.

This method has much better shelf life than the original versions, and you'll notice some great battery life even when they've been in your box for awhile. There are several less obvious improvements like this in the new generation architecture.

I've gotta put my two cents in on your customer service...AMAZING!!

I flew my Altimeter One last year and it landed in the only small pond in a 4 million sq ft grazing pasture. I emailed John and asked him if he could repair it and even offered to pay for the repair. He told me to send it to him and he replaced it at no charge. I was so impressed I bought an Altimeter Two. I currently fly a Stratologger and an Adept 22 for dual deploy, but still use both the One and the Two alongside those.

After reading about the features of the A3 I'll definitely buy one when it comes out...keep up the great work!

John Beans said:

In fact, they don't use any power while off. The older Jolly Logic altimeters did consume a slight amount of sleep current while off, but not these new ones. When you click the button, it sends a signal to the microcontroller which decides what to do. If you're under acceleration, it does nothing. Otherwise, it releases a MOSFET and disconnects the battery completely.

This method has much better shelf life than the original versions, and you'll notice some great battery life even when they've been in your box for awhile. There are several less obvious improvements like this in the new generation architecture.

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Oh - I like that!! That scratches my biggest itch with the earlier ones (but not so much the earliest ones) - that they're dead when one is getting ready to go fly.

John Beans said:

When you click the button, it sends a signal to the microcontroller which decides what to do. If you're under acceleration, it does nothing. Otherwise, it releases a MOSFET and disconnects the battery completely.

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What about if a bit of the recovery stuff (shock cord, 'chute) manages to intrude into the button well for a moment while inserting the altimeter into the BT?

Here's what I've already used many times for impact protection of my Estes altimeter (if there's room in the airframe). It's just a piece of the foam insulation meant for copper pipes, forget the size, cheap and easily available at any home improvement store. The Estes altimeter and Altimeter II have a nice friction fit in it and I've never had ejection forces even budge the position of the foam on the altimeter:



Might even be useful to paint the foam with dayglow orange paint if that doesn't dissolve the foam or flake off too easily, making a mess, in order to make this combo easier to find if the altimeter somehow separates from the rocket.

Winston,
That's a nice setup. Always pays to be safe. I've seen our altimeters fall from over 1000' and survive, but in the very first versions (anyone remember when they were glued together--just for the first batch?) the "nose cone slap" during ejection could break them. Also, sometimes I've heard of cases where they hit a park bench just the wrong way and break. So the more cushioning, the better.

As for hitting the button during loading... well, don't do that. ;-) On the last generation we were so paranoid about inadvertent pushes that "advertent" pushes were a pain. So we backed off a little. The new ones are easy to push, but still not quite flush with the case. Compromise?

John Beans said:

Winston,
That's a nice setup. Always pays to be safe. I've seen our altimeters fall from over 1000' and survive, but in the very first versions (anyone remember when they were glued together--just for the first batch?) the "nose cone slap" during ejection could break them. Also, sometimes I've heard of cases where they hit a park bench just the wrong way and break. So the more cushioning, the better.

As for hitting the button during loading... well, don't do that. ;-) On the last generation we were so paranoid about inadvertent pushes that "advertent" pushes were a pain. So we backed off a little. The new ones are easy to push, but still not quite flush with the case. Compromise?

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Yeah, it was that potential nosecone slap right after ejection that I was concerned about since I use a short Kevlar lanyard with clip to attach the altimeters to nosecones. Plus, the foam guard absolutely prevents any inadvertent button pushes or slide switch power switch movement on the Estes altimeter and, now, my Altimeter II v2. Will definitely be buying an Altimeter III as soon as those show up, too.

I have no idea if the naked (without foam sleeve) Altimeter II's power/mode button will ever present a problem while loading at pre-flight, but if it ever turns out that it does, perhaps a change in operation to quick momentary for on, longer press for menu, even longer press for off?

John Beans said:

In the very first versions (anyone remember when they were glued together--just for the first batch?) the "nose cone slap" during ejection could break them.

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Oh yes, I remember. I still have one of those and it works fine.... And I broke one as well.

I suspect those of us that went with Windows 8 Phone will be SOL?

Right Wing Wacko said:

I suspect those of us that went with Windows 8 Phone will be SOL?

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Maybe eventually? I'm actually writing the iOS and Android apps in .NET/C#, but the limiting factor right now is that the graphing and charting library doesn't have a Windows 8 port yet. The charting is pretty intense. There's plenty of things I don't mind writing myself, but not charting.

At NARCON I asked for a show of hands re: mobile platform. As you'd imagine it was all iOS and Android--except for one person. Was that you?

Right Wing Wacko said:

I suspect those of us that went with Windows 8 Phone will be SOL?

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You could pick up an inexpensive Android tablet to use with the altimeter.

-- Roger

jadebox said:

You could pick up an inexpensive Android tablet to use with the altimeter.

-- Roger

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I actually have a nice Android Tablet (Samsung Note 10.1), as well as a really good Windows 8.1 Tablet. I prefer the Win8 Tab. I can run the full version of Open Rocket or Rocksim on it if I need to.

Any news on the Altimeter3?

One would really be nice to have for an upcoming project I might be doing soon...

CarVac said:

Any news on the Altimeter3? One would really be nice to have for an upcoming project I might be doing soon...

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We're getting close. The altimeters are stacked up, waiting to ship. Right now we're waiting on the Apple App Store to approve a first version of the iPhone app; the Android app will be submitted right after it's in the Apple App Store, and Play apps get approved within hours usually.

There will be an update to the app after it's in the app store to fix some things that our beta testers are finding during flights. Most of this concerns Bluetooth weirdness (difficulties in connecting/reconnecting Bluetooth). Once AltimeterThree is released, we'll all owe a huge debt of gratitude to the beta testers who had to suffer through the frustration of helping us get this right. As usual, the pioneers get the arrows.

We could use a couple of more Android beta testers for final tweaking. If you're interested, hit me up at [email protected] with your hardware setup and launch plans. No promises given the tight schedule, but more testing is always better, and I'm sure it will be ongoing as we roll out more features.

I recently saw a beta tester's smart phone screen running the Altimeter III interface software after a flight of Altimeter III. I asked to see text data about various flight characteristics available to Altimeter II users, but the text data display I saw seemed very limited and didn't offer most of that data. If that's correct and the operator wasn't running an ancient alpha or beta version of software and if it wasn't that he simply didn't know how to get to the proper screen, I'd like to see all of the flight characteristics currently available with Altimeter II displayed on one page/screen of text data. In the field, those graphs on a phone's LCD are tiny and difficult to see in outdoor ambient lighting anyway.

Cool, thanks. I have sent an inquiry.

Specs? Max G's on the accelerometers?

Is there a price point yet on the 3?

wfcook said:

Specs? Max G's on the accelerometers?

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I believe it is 22 g (or so implied earlier in the thread).

Winston said:

I recently saw a beta tester's smart phone screen running the Altimeter III interface software after a flight of Altimeter III. I asked to see text data about various flight characteristics available to Altimeter II users, but the text data display I saw seemed very limited and didn't offer most of that data. If that's correct and the operator wasn't running an ancient alpha or beta version of software and if it wasn't that he simply didn't know how to get to the proper screen, I'd like to see all of the flight characteristics currently available with Altimeter II displayed on one page/screen of text data. In the field, those graphs on a phone's LCD are tiny and difficult to see in outdoor ambient lighting anyway.

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John has told me a couple of times that he's planning to do that. The current version of the iOS app that's out in the beta test field still does not do so. I'm sure it's in the plan, though.

And yes, connecting/reconnecting Bluetooth weirdness has been frustrating at times.....but I'm sure we'll get there.

Winston said:

I recently saw a beta tester's smart phone screen running the Altimeter III interface software after a flight of Altimeter III. I asked to see text data about various flight characteristics available to Altimeter II users, but the text data display I saw seemed very limited and didn't offer most of that data. If that's correct and the operator wasn't running an ancient alpha or beta version of software and if it wasn't that he simply didn't know how to get to the proper screen, I'd like to see all of the flight characteristics currently available with Altimeter II displayed on one page/screen of text data. In the field, those graphs on a phone's LCD are tiny and difficult to see in outdoor ambient lighting anyway.

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As BEC mentioned, there's more coming. That stuff (adding in the flight analyses) is fun programming. We've been wrestling the non-fun basics of launch-to-launch use, and a lot of that involves Bluetooth standards that were never designed for the case where one of the two modems streaks off at 600 MPH without warning, only to amble into range a few minutes later looking to make nice again.

If you've used my products, you know that I try really hard to design-in convenience. By way of comparison, think about how hard it can be to pair a phone with your car when it gets unpaired (new phone, dead battery, teenager, etc.). Bluetooth can be truly weird, as the Beta testers can attest. Android helps a lot by exposing more of the management interface so that the phone app can query and control the connection process, but Apple closes it off pretty rigidly, ostensibly to control battery usage and secondarily for privacy/security. But we've figured out workarounds, and now we just need to get all of the corner cases smoothed out, including situations such as when a user has a phone AND a tablet they want to pair with the altimeter. A good tight, quickly re-connecting pairing is what you want during use, but you also need to sever that bond and switch to your other device sometimes. Takes some doing.

The G-limit is the same as AltimeterTwo (as is the form factor). There will be an Extreme Version at some point of both the 'Two and the 'Three, probably limited to 100G. 200G is just a setting away, but that's crazy, y'all. Half the sensitivity and just way too much shock for normal electronics.

Price will be $99. Yes it's a lot, but the stuff we're going to be doing with letting you share your "flight stories" and pictures from phone is really cool. Stay tuned.

Heck, even streaking off at 120 mph can confuse the poor link....

John- I have to tell you how impressed I was with the (newer) Alt2. I have 4 of the older ones but I broke it out of the package and charged it on the way to ROC 40. After a brutal hike to retrieve, there it was doing it's thing in all the expanded glory I've come to expect from your fine products. I think I need more of these too! Looking forward to the '3' version but right now- the new '2' rocks pretty hard. These will go one a bunch of sleds along with DD alts for more info. Thanks again for these superlative little beauties!

fyrwrxz said:

John- I have to tell you how impressed I was with the (newer) Alt2. I have 4 of the older ones but I broke it out of the package and charged it on the way to ROC 40. After a brutal hike to retrieve, there it was doing it's thing in all the expanded glory I've come to expect from your fine products. I think I need more of these too! Looking forward to the '3' version but right now- the new '2' rocks pretty hard. These will go one a bunch of sleds along with DD alts for more info. Thanks again for these superlative little beauties!

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Ditto from me. I've found the Altimeter II to be very useful.

Image from AltimeterThree User Guide. Taking a break from Bluetooth debugging...

John Beans said:

Image from AltimeterThree User Guide. Taking a break from Bluetooth debugging...

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John, what is the latest on the AltimeterThree? It is on my Christmas list and I am hoping Mrs. Clause will be able to get one under the tree.

John Beans said:

Yesterday Jolly Logic introduced new versions of AltimeterOne and AltimeterTwo. I thought you guys might appreciate a little behind-the-scenes perspective.

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In some respects, these are what I'd like to have designed when the first versions were introduced. We've learned a lot, and it's rolled into these versions.

Here's a partial list of the improvements:

1. Easier to understand displays (fonts, complete words, animated menus)
2. Bigger, more reliable battery
3. Larger, more rugged and convenient tether point
4. Internal cushioning for components
5. User-replaceable parts
6. Stores your last 100 flights
7. Switch from built-in USB plug to universal Micro-B connector

The last item, the addition of a cable, is one that I resisted. But creating a built-in plug wasn't without issues; it didn't fit everywhere, and it could even be mistakenly plugged in upside down. The nice thing about the Micro-B connector is that it's as close to universal as it gets for mobile devices. Odds are you have a Micro-B charger in the house somewhere (if you have a headset or an Android phone, you may have one). If you don't, the included cable fits anywhere, and Micro-B cables and chargers are cheap and widely available.

We will soon introduce a new Snap Mount for these. If your rocket has a payload sled, you can attach the mount to it, then just snap the altimeter in. Makes it easier to move an altimeter from rocket to rocket.

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Part of the impetus for moving to a different, shared, form-factor was provided by the upcoming AltimeterThree, which adds a Bluetooth radio, flash storage, and an Apple encryption chip. Stay tuned!

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So they are more rugged? And I can plug them into my computer an download the info to my hard drive?

Andrew

accooper said:

So they are more rugged?

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Yes.

And I can plug them into my computer an download the info to my hard drive?

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No. The USB connection is for charging the batteries.

-- Roger

Now that the 3 is out, will the 2 be getting any updates or is v3.9 the last we can expect? Just curious if any bugs had been found/fixed, on my Altimeter2 it always displays "Battery Level 32%" after going into the menu and selecting either "Units" or "Erase", regardless of the actual battery level. It only gets displayed for a second or two then goes away. Not a big deal, just slightly annoying.