Source? Availability? Support requirements (computer or app or....?)
Lighest Available Altimeter That Records Flight Duration
- Thread starter grillsjosephbus
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I think I heard it is very 'esoteric' and even hard to get at times.
I think the market would embrace another entry in the arena
Edit: keep in mind I only have read that , on this forum I think, if it is the one I am thinking about.
I think a Blue Tooth product that replaces the Flight Sketch will have more buyers
I fully agree on all your points. I just have a habit of collecting and test-flying small altimeters, so would like to at least know if that BRC thing is real/obtainable/usable. The best link I could find took me to a facebox post from October of last year saying "stay tuned". The quoted mass (0.63g) is without a power source. That puts it right with the Adrel Max-Alt. An FS Comp is just under a gram including its 9 mAh cell.
I am REALLY excited about what Adrian is looking at doing and will help wherever I can to see it become available and hopefully stay that way for a good long while.
Ah, well that pretty much precludes me adding one to my collection any time soon.
I'll contact them to find out if they are selling them outside of Russia. I helped them in 2019 with their early projects.
Cool.
I have one Russian altimeter from quite a few years ago now...it was odd in that it used a micro SD card for storing flight data. It had some real usability quirks and did not become a production product as far as I know.
I forgot to mention that the hole in the board to use for a tether is very welcome.
Also I apologize for sucking up your time via email in the connector discussion, since I could have gotten the information (other than that I gleaned from searching for drawings) by just rereading what is already in this thread. When someone does that to me I get irritated. I appreciate that you took the time to re-educate me. I'll try to be more careful not to repeat myself so much as this project goes on.
I don't recall what it was called. But I don't think it had such a nice name as that.
It came from a fellow named Andrey Davidovich in early 2012. I found a picture of the little package he shipped it in (wrapped in brown paper and tied up with twine) from late January of that year and a couple of emails in April about related software. I've looked in a couple of other places and haven't found anything else...yay not saving electronic correspondence for future reference. I guess.
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Wow, an MPX6115 barometric sensor. Definitely not an InSight200+. I don't recognize the processor, but the connected pins will narrow the search. The lack of a power regulator implies that the power source (battery) was regulated. I would guess that the altitude data rate would be in the 20-50 Hz range.
There is nothing wrong using an SD card for data storage. Early this year, I was toying with a dual SD card for a 1000Hz flight system before going to SDIO. The future will be micro-SSD memory for HPR.
What would you guys think about battery life if the product has a standby life measured in months, and can be put into an active mode using your phone that lasts for 1-4 hours of flight time without recharging, depending on a configuration you pick?
When it runs out of power at the end, does it save the data before final power off ?
Not to be too pedantic, but by 1-4 hours of flight time, do you mean 1-4 hours of active data collection? That would be absolutely amazing. Or do you mean 1-4 hours from being put in active mode waiting to fly and hopefully flying before depleting the cell and going back to sleep awaiting a recharge?
I was just looking again at the FAI altimeter spec which calls for it to "Be powered by a flight battery, either rechargeable or non-rechargeable, having sufficient capacity to operate the altimeter for a minimum of five hours before requiring recharging or replacement." Of course what that actually means isn't clear either. But based on how Avis and Will and Dan and I ran the altimeter pen at the WSMC last year near Austin, I would take that to mean that the altimeter could be put in "ready to fly mode", which for an Adrel just means plugging the cell in and waiting for 3 minutes, then having it be able to record an actual flight within the next five hours. That would allow for loading the altimeter in the model at the beginning of a round, then having the actual flight at the end of the round, with lots of margin afterward for recovery....which to me means 5 hours is overkill as rounds are not that long.
I am not sure (I have never tested it) whether an Adrel ALT-BMP can run for 5 hours just waiting to fly on the standard 23 mAh cell. We were madly recharging cells and rotating altimeters and cells between contestants during the meet as part of the rules we were working to required them to be exchanged between flights.
As another point of reference, Jolly Logic devices power off after two hours of inactivity, and FlightSketch devices do so after four, so their power buttons need to be pushed again to wake the up (or in the FS Comp case, probably pull and reconnect the cell....or replace it with a charged one — again, I have not tested the run time here.
But along those lines, I recently did a bunch of flight testing where I flew the same model 18 times over the course of about 3 1/2 hours. I used a FlightSketch Comp to gather altitude data for these flights and it was powered up for the entire time, since I didn't have to physically get to it to put it in ready-to-fly mode, download and save the data post flight, and repeat the cycle. I actually did this on two different sessions and in both cases the tiny 9 mAh cell was not depleted in that time period. I was happy with that.
I'm not sure how that relates to the modes you're thinking of.
But all of this is several steps down the road anyway unless you're designing to the FAI specs from the beginning with an eye toward getting into that niche perhaps some time later along with providing something sport flyers and NAR competitors.
I would certainly expect so. Every other small altimeter does this...the most recent flight's data is there regardless of power cycle or cycles until it is overwritten by new flight data or in the case of the other two not-currently-available bluetooth altimeters, until they are commanded to start recording.
Yes, it records as it goes along and detects landing to stop the recording
To be more specific, the conops I'm imagining is that you would plug in the battery and you can button up the rocket any time up to weeks or maybe months before the flight. Then on the day of the launch you can put it into standby or active mode whenever you want, using the phone app. Active mode, would last 1-4 hours depending on the scenario. The range of the wireless link that can control the active/standby mode might be normal Bluetooth range or possibly much longer than that.
I'm designing first without regard to the FAI specifics and then I'll figure out whether making an FAI version would be too painful. I suspect that the 5 hour requirement wasn't made with wireless standby control in mind.
Nice.
That's an interesting scenario. I have to say that I can't think of a situation where I'd put an altimeter in a model and button it up and then let it sit for weeks or months unless I put it in a model, the launch then got scrubbed, and then I forgot about it
. But that doesn't mean it couldn't happen. Remember, too, that we're talking about low power stuff for the most part here.I've already described one of my more ambitious testing scenarios, which was much facilitated by not needing to remove the device to read/reset it between flights. But even for me that was an outlier (I was testing motors, not altimeters, and wanted to get a bunch of flights in on one model with relatively constant weather conditions).
To me it is much more likely (unless this "Blue Hummingbird" costs as little as the original FS Mini did — $19 with power source — and so there could be many of them dedicated to different models in one's fleet) that it would be in and out of a model at least two or three times on a given days' flying. In a contest situation, how many times would depend on how many altimeter-needed events were flown on a given day (at NARAM that typically is one or two, with two flights per event) and how many devices I had to hand. FAI events are flown in three flight rounds per event.
Which leads to a "please" item for your app (unless it's already there). Please make it easy to manage multiple devices while keeping straight which one is which. Having more than one, and having them in models on the field at the same time, is quite likely especially in a competition scenario. I certainly would want to have at least two or three of these "Hummingbirds" once they are available and would likely use more than one at a time. Also, since it's tiny, and some of the models it will go in are also quite tiny, they WILL get lost...so having more than one at the field is certainly likely.
FS devices have an eight or nine digit ID number that they broadcast to the app and which is used to ID the one to connect to at a given moment. I just labeled all my Minis and Comps with the last four digits of that number and used that to ID and keep track of them both on my phone in in my log book. [added: and since your proto-Hummingbird at least has a number of components on both sides of the board, labeling them the simple way I have been doing it with FS devices won't work so well....hmmmmmmmm.]
And this in turn leads to a need to be readily able to tell "mine" from "everybody else's" on the app. When an FS device is turned on but not connected to a given person's app, it can be seen by anyone who has the FS app open on their device and is within Bluetooth range (if they are also looking to connect to one). At my main local flying site (Sixty Acres) and also on the field at NARAM and at Sod Blaster, this lead to confusion and possibly connecting to someone else's device if one didn't have that ID number remembered well. I probably should go read some of your existing Blue Raven/Blue Jay documentation to see how you handle this already, as I expect you do. But being able to easily cope with maybe dozens of these little guys on a field at a time (as would certainly be the case at a NARAM if they are well adopted) and easily know mine from Steve's from Chad's from Vern's from Al's.....and they the same....is desirable and is an aspect that I don't think Russ Parrish thought through much in his app design for the FS devices.
I'm not really surprised at this. There are some things in that FAI spec that even the Adrel does not meet and for which, as I understand it, they were granted exemptions. We can discuss specifics offline if you like, or better you can get the details from Dan Wolf who likely knows them off the top of his head. One of the things that Russ hasn't done is incorporate the various state indications via a flashing LED that are called out in the FAI spec. What I have often wondered is if the FAI spec called them out and Adrel implemented them that way, or the FAI just codified the way the ALT-BMP works. I suppose I'd suggest not doing anything that would make it really really hard to implement that stuff later (no kidding, right?). And yes, I expect that 5-hour requirement wasn't made with wireless control in mind.
also added: When I think of how we ran altimeters at the WSMC, which was, to the best of our ability, per the procedure in the FAI document, the whole "conops" as you called it is driven around the official reading/downloading of data being done, scores recorded and altimeters reset for the next flight at a central point on the flying site, by contest officials, not the contestant. This is completely different than how each contestant being in control of the data, as is the case with a phone app (or an altimeter with a flashing LED/beeper for readout or display), works. I'm not sure where this leads. Again something to chat with active FAI competitors about rather than me, I think.
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Do you have any updates on the altimeter? I am interested in purchasing several for NARAM, Egglofting record attempts in early March, and other records.
I have my prototype in hand, and I verified that I can program the microcontroller. However, firmware development for it is on hold right now while I focus on ordering prototypes for two other products. I don't think this one will be ready for sale in time for flights this spring.
Is that a tiny red Blue Tooth module up in the northeast corner of your PCB ?
Thanks !
-- kjh
It's a Bluetooth antenna.
Thanks Adrian.
The ultra miniature/lightweight competition stuff is not really my scene, but as an engineer, the miniaturization and optimization for the mission is very impressive. Very cool stuff. I’m excited to see where this all goes. Great work!
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Amazing! I’d love to see an ultra mini lightweight altimeter with GPS combined or at least that option to have both on the same board.
@Adrian A
WOW that looks amazing. I somehow missed this thread till now. But chalk me up for a couple of these.
I have a handful of the FS Mini and a few FS Comp, that I have relegated to "special flights" just because I can't replace them currently. (I do have a couple Eggtimer ION's too. But the size/weight is an issue in smaller rockets.)
I would love to get back to sending a altimeter in every flight.
Probably not in that footprint.
Very small. It will be perfect. Name? Hummingbird?
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It's been done, just not sure how well it works for rocketry, or whether it's legal in the US.
https://bmks.co.uk/products/bmk-sky...95983&pr_ref_pid=7075076833487&pr_seq=uniform
That one is 20x21x6mm. The Hummingbird is 20 x 10 x 4.
Oh good god that is sexy
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Yeah, but... The Hummingbird doesn't include GPS tracking.
Different products, different pricing, I'm sure.
