Alternative to Joly logic and Estes altimeters for less than 10 euros

[bdureau]

I have made another altimeter with a TTGO board with a more powerfull accelerometer on a separate board see my other post
https://www.rocketryforum.com/threads/ttgo-altimeter.184918/

 

[Art Upton]

Did you put your board in boot mode
you need to do the following
- press and mantain the boot button
- press reset and release it
- release the boot
then you should be able to flash it

OK, thanks. That worked.

I was going by your new document and that seems to be missing, but perhaps I simply missed it.

I will also study how to build the firmware in the Arduino IDE

 

[bdureau]

It should be on the doc but maybe not clear enough

 

[bdureau]

It should be also on the on line help of the Android application

 

[John Kemker]

Just ordered two from AliExpress and cloned the GitHub repository. Can't wait to try it out!

 

[bdureau]

OK, thanks. That worked.

I was going by your new document and that seems to be missing, but perhaps I simply missed it.

I will also study how to build the firmware in the Arduino IDE

If you want to compile it make sure you follow my instructions on github
- I have a custom TFT library ( hopefully it will be part of the main TFT one day)
- you need to configure that library to use the board
- you need a specific version of the ESP32 support otherwise the TFT lib will not work ( you may need to downgrade it on your Arduino environement)

 

[shawn_rocket]

So, should I reverse the wires if I solder a JST connector to the board for the battery? I am not familiar with the difference between RC and Arduino wiring. I am assuming that red is power and black is ground/common.

 

[Art Upton]

This is what you are looking at , these are RC wired JSTs
Red is still always positive, black negative; you have to match what the board wants.

The one on the right is a board the way Arduino and maker boards like the ESP are wired. If your going to solder the wires, you solder Red to + and Black to -

 

[kenstarr]

I'm excited to try this mainly because I love tinkering. Also, Boris has some great products I enjoy. Thanks Boris for all your work to further the hobby!
Ken

 

[thzero]

Ok, after much banging my head at this sorta backwards environment, here are the steps I've used to get an IDE installed, the libraries, and then compile and upload the code to the board.

-----

install ardunioIDE
https://randomnerdtutorials.com/installing-esp32-arduino-ide-2-0/

open adrunioIDE

You will need to have the ESP32 board support version 2.0.14, anything higher than that may not work !!!

C:\Users\<user>\OneDrive\Documents\Arduino

git clone https://github.com/thzero/UltimateAltimeter.git

open C:\Users\<user>\OneDrive\Documents\Arduino\UltimateAltimeter

Hold the boot button when plugging in to enter boot loader Once connected, make sure you are using Adafruit Feather ESP32-S3 TFT

ArdunioIDE setup...

Under Tools->Manage Libraries

ArduinoJson
BME280
Button2
LittleFS_esp2 for UltimateAltimeterLittleFS
To use this, you need to set the Tools->Partition Scheme to "Default 4MB with Spiffs (1.2MB apps/1.5MB SPIFFS)"
Preferences for UltimateAltimeterLittle
SensorLib (used for the QMI8658 sensor)
TFT
TFT_eWidget

For the TFT_eSPI (custom) library...

in C:\Users\<user>\OneDrive\Documents\Arduino\libraries
git clone https://github.com/bdureau/TFT_eSPI.git

Open C:\Users\<user>\OneDrive\Documents\Arduino\libraries\TFT_eSPI\User_Setup_Select.h in a text editor

Comment out the following line

//#include <User_Setup.h>

and uncomment the following line

#include <User_Setups/Setup400_Adafruit_Feather.h>
-----

 

[thzero]

Figured it out and updated my post, it was the wrong partition type needs to be some of the options with SPIFFS, i.e. "Default 4MB with Spiffs (1.2MB apps/1.5MB SPIFFS)"

 

[bdureau]

I'm excited to try this mainly because I love tinkering. Also, Boris has some great products I enjoy. Thanks Boris for all your work to further the hobby!
Ken

The boards that I have sold have allowed me to finance some crazy projects. The good thing about this one is that you do not have to buy it from me so it is cheaper and a lot more people will buy it. With opensource hardware unlike with software you always have to buy someting....

 

[bdureau]

Figured it out and updated my post, it was the wrong partition type needs to be some of the options with SPIFFS, i.e. "Default 4MB with Spiffs (1.2MB apps/1.5MB SPIFFS)"

It took me a while to figure it out ....
If I find some time this week I will write a manual for developpers that wants to contribute.
You also have the Android console that does some cool things to share the data with others

I need to fix few things still.
Also I would be interrested to see if people have some ideas to improve the navigation options. This is not very easy to navigate with a single button!!!

Remember, the more we are to test it and report issues the better it will get . With the flashing option from an Android device it is easy to release out new firmware.
If someone has time to do a video on how to flash or use the board that would help.

 

[bdureau]

So, should I reverse the wires if I solder a JST connector to the board for the battery? I am not familiar with the difference between RC and Arduino wiring. I am assuming that red is power and black is ground/common.

If you solder it on the board vbat is the red wire and GND is the ground

 

[Art Upton]

open adrunioIDE

You will need to have the ESP32 board support version 2.0.14, anything higher than that may not work !!
-----

Does this show the correct 2.0.14 installed?

 

[bdureau]

yes it should be

 

[cwbullet]

If you buy the reverse polarity - How do you charge them?

 

[Spacedog49Krell]

If you buy the reverse polarity - How do you charge them?

Adafruit makes a charger for their polarity.

 

[John Kemker]

I've got a bunch of the ones with the RC polarity and a charger that handles them. I've made some polarity-reversing leads To make them compatible with different pieces of electronics.

 

[cwbullet]

Adafruit makes a charger for their polarity.

Thanks - I did not think to check there.

I've got a bunch of the ones with the RC polarity and a charger that handles them. I've made some polarity-reversing leads To make them compatible with different pieces of electronics.

Thanks.

 

[thzero]

yes it should be

Hi

I'm a bit confused what you intended for the loop().

Seems that you are looping and checking for if its not greater than liftoff height but there is the serial connection available to loop until that is completed with a ; blocking the thread, then if altitude is greater than liftoff height going into that routine and completely blocking the thread while looping in that one until altitude is less than 10.

That about right?

Would think you'd want one control loop.
if (not in flight) {
Each time you can check if there is more characters on the serial port and if so drain them
execute any command if ";" was found.
}
else (in flight) {
check ReadAltitude on each loop
inflight becomes false when exit criteria are reached.
}

 

[bdureau]

I am sure that it could be optimized. This is some old code that I have been using with all my altimeters that are communicating with my Aandroid app .I think that I need to document it with diagram and maybe see if it can be simplified.

 

[bdureau]

It is some code that I wrote more than 10 years ago so it is good to have people actually looking at it !!!!

 

[jpoehlman]

If you buy the reverse polarity - How do you charge them?

The board has a built in charge circuit too, just connect a USB-C to charge a connected battery.

 

[Art Upton]

If you buy the reverse polarity - How do you charge them?

This is on the bottom of the board under the JST battery connector. I wonder if like my Arduino FIO board, the board charges the battery when the USB is plugged in?

 

[bdureau]

This is on the bottom of the board under the JST battery connector. I wonder if like my Arduino FIO board, the board charges the battery when the USB is plugged in?

View attachment 687590

yes it does charge it .
However I have not tried the fast charge. I guess you just need to bridge it

 

[bdureau]

Just did a quick video to just show how easy it is to flash your board in less than 2 minutes even if you are not a developper

 

[cwbullet]

The board has a built in charge circuit too, just connect a USB-C to charge a connected battery.

funny.

 

[cwbullet]

Just did a quick video to just show how easy it is to flash your board in less than 2 minutes even if you are not a developper

Looks seamless. Thanks for the video.

 

[bdureau]

Just did a couple of videos to show how to use the board standalone

or with an Android device


Hope that it helps people that bought those boards on Aliexpress