R2Home - Guided Parachute Recovery System - For rocketry and weather balloon

the rocketry show
Advertise with us
rocket sok
eggtimer rocketry
The Rocketry Forum

Help Support The Rocketry Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Yohan H said:
Hey there,

So this update is not exactly about rocketry but I think you might be interested anyway because it has good consequences for the development of the project in general.

We just did the first "high altitude" test flight, and it was a success. R2Home flew up to 3500m (11400ft) under a weather balloon launched with the help of MeteoSwiss and then came back to the launch site autonomously with a landing within 5 meters from the launch point.

As you will see at the end of the video it was pretty gusty on ground, but R2Home managed to keep fighting the wind and we technically still had some margin because this new wing is coming with the ability to change in flight the angle of attack to accelerate (while loosing glide ratio) and we were on the slowest speed trim.



So, why am I saying that this is interesting for rocketry, well because it seems to me that most people interested to fly such a system will fly it around these altitudes, and in most cases with much less drift than the balloon experienced on ascent. In other words this is a perfect example of the come-back capability of the system.

The foam shell you can see in the video is the box designed to fly R2Home with weather balloons, don't worry about it for the rocket integration, the old good 3" coupler tube design is still compatible with the current R2Home version.

I'll spend the next months working on perfecting the system but I'm confident you can already start dreaming about using it on your next-next build. I'll do an update by the end of the summer to see if we can start finding first beta testers.

Yohan
Click to expand...

That's wonderful!
 
Handeman said:
That is fantastic!

Can it be upsized to carry a 5 - 10 Kg load back?
Click to expand...
Pretty much, yes!

You'll need 3 things, an upscaled wing to keep a decent wing loading, larger spools (only if you want to upscale more than 2 times, because the current spools are two times larger than needed) and updated control settings because larger wings will fly differently (better!) and you won't have the same inertia and pendulum moment.

It's part of my plan to try to have at least three sizes for the same wing. Probably for 1, 2.5 and 5kg.

For reference the version you saw in the video above is 1.5kg

It was really hard to make such a small system. Even if we can try harder to make it smaller with less COTS components). It's quite easier to upscale in the 5-10kg range. 50 or 100kg would be another challenge though.
 
Yohan H said:
Pretty much, yes!

You'll need 3 things, an upscaled wing to keep a decent wing loading, larger spools (only if you want to upscale more than 2 times, because the current spools are two times larger than needed) and updated control settings because larger wings will fly differently (better!) and you won't have the same inertia and pendulum moment.

It's part of my plan to try to have at least three sizes for the same wing. Probably for 1, 2.5 and 5kg.

For reference the version you saw in the video above is 1.5kg

It was really hard to make such a small system. Even if we can try harder to make it smaller with less COTS components). It's quite easier to upscale in the 5-10kg range. 50 or 100kg would be another challenge though.
Click to expand...
That's great to hear. Most of my rockets that would fly high enough to warrant a system like this are all near or over 5 Kg.

The biggest issue I had when trying to deploy a similar system that was RC controlled wasn't the flying part, that was easy, it was the deployment. Most times the chute tangled and fell. Consistent deployment from a round rocket body tube was much harder than what a normal skydiving type deployment would be because of the random orientation at deployment and the shock cords involve to keep all the rocket parts together.

What kind of effect does the pilot chute and d-bag have on the forward speed of the wing when descending?
 
Handeman said:
That's great to hear. Most of my rockets that would fly high enough to warrant a system like this are all near or over 5 Kg.

The biggest issue I had when trying to deploy a similar system that was RC controlled wasn't the flying part, that was easy, it was the deployment. Most times the chute tangled and fell. Consistent deployment from a round rocket body tube was much harder than what a normal skydiving type deployment would be because of the random orientation at deployment and the shock cords involve to keep all the rocket parts together.

What kind of effect does the pilot chute and d-bag have on the forward speed of the wing when descending?
Click to expand...

Thanks for the feedback, that's interesting to hear. I'll definitely shoot for a 5kg version in that case. The way the deployment is working on a model rocket can be seen on the HPR test flight I did earlier this year except you'll be able to have a longer time for fall under drogchute before deployment of the wing.

I might have not said it clearly earlier but you control the moment you want to "release" the drogchute and dbag and open the wing. The release mechanism is using a servo, but the load is entirely redirected to the shock cord to which the system is attached. And in case you guys don't trust my servo mechanism we can easily replace it for a pyro cutter, It'll work the same.

Another 'great' thing is the the drogchute I'm using even for the 1.5kg version has the size of the drogchute used for skydiving. Meaning that you can easily get a COTS perfectly stable drogchute rated for human loads.

In short all you have to do get R2Home ready start working at apogee is a reliable way to pop the drogchute out. What I did on the HPR flight earlier this year was that the whole R2Home system was just a piston inside the body tube. At apogee the pyro charge blows under it, it pushes the nosecone and drogchute out and it's ready for the deployment of the wing in the next few secondes. You can find again photos from the flight higher in this thread to see the setup.

For the nosecone attachement there are a few possible solutions, one of them is to keep it attached directly on the top of the drogchute if it's light enough. Otherwise It'll be attached to the top of the R2Home bloc.

Keep in mind this is just one way of doing it, again, all you really have to do is to pop my drogchute out.

Both drogchute and dbag creates drag, so slower forward speed than without. But the wing is so fast that I believe we can afford it. Doing otherwise would mean loosing both of them every time which is quite the opposite of guided recovery.
 
So I just joined hackaday to follow your project. What is the current status of the file on GitHub? Or do you want to carry on that conversation over on hackaday? (I'm new to that and the github environment).
 
Blast it Tom! said:
Yes, but that is piloted from the ground using a conventional 2 Channel RC controller like for airplanes. It's still in beta and has been discussed extensively on another thread here.

Yohan's system finds its own way home!
Click to expand...
Agree -- definitely think that this thread discusses a superior solution -- just wanted to OP to know there might be a market for this...
 
Blast it Tom! said:
So I just joined hackaday to follow your project. What is the current status of the file on GitHub? Or do you want to carry on that conversation over on hackaday? (I'm new to that and the GitHub environment).
Click to expand...


This summer I completely rewritten the software using an object-oriented (cleaner than before) method and implemented new more sophisticated navigation methods as well as support for higher-grade sensors required for high-altitude flight. I still haven't published this version and need to think about how to do it as in the same time I have also received requests for using it for less fun applications that don't really align with my vision of what robots should be used for.

I also implemented hardware in the loop flight simulations with a xyz and time wind forecast grid which helps a lot to prove the reliability of the software on hundreds of flights before actually doing them.

You can expect an update mid-November about where and how this software will be accessible and the project in general.

Again, thumbs up to Apogee for getting hardware out in many hands. Would love to do the same and will probably try as soon as possible.
 
Absolutely brilliant... Was thinking about getting the Apogee system since I am normally a RC guy... But this keeps me tempted. You are located in switzerland?
 
McTschegsn said:
Absolutely brilliant... Was thinking about getting the Apogee system since I am normally a RC guy... But this keeps me tempted. You are located in Switzerland?
Click to expand...

Thanks! I would say, if you have the budget, get one from Apogee, get used to it and next year you'll be able to compare it to the R2HOME version. I'm located near Lausanne, Switzerland, and spending most of my time studying for a Bachelor in Microengineering at EPFL.
 
Budget is not the problem :) And next year is not far away :) Looks like I have to test both :) What diameter is your device? Better: What minimum diameter must the bodytube have?
 
How have I not seen this thread until now?!!! This is simply incredible work.

Side note…it’s interesting that both you and Joe Barnard (of thrust vectoring fame), we’re both interested in music and then switched to this kind of engineering.
 
Yohan H said:
2" requires extra work, 3" works, 4" would be extra easy
Click to expand...
Oh, that makes this fellow happy! I am "mindsimming" my heavy lifter, a 2.6" (BT-80) 3 engine cluster, a remake/upgrade of something I built over 50 years ago (when I was younger than our friend Yohan here) and never flew due to a chaotic family breakup. I'm figuring on 3 24mm x 95 mm (or 70 mm with a block) motors, and can easily transition to 3" for the R2Home part.

Glad you went to modular code, I haven't done a ton of programming recently, and most of it has be very high level (like MATAB), and not invovling real-time control work. That's a special art all it's own.

(And I've seen threads here that point out that a single engine of the same total impulse will get you further than a cluster. But this is all about recreating my childhood AND making a lout of smoke and fire for the grandkids!)

(edited to fix an extremely embarrassing typo that was actually a real word!)
 

Similar threads

H
Questions regarding equations for calculating the force of a parachute opening.
Replies
24
Views
1K
Spacedog49Krell
Spacedog49Krell
ljwilley
CALLING ALL CHUTE EXPERTS!!! -- Need Some Help With An Old Mystery Parachute!
Replies
7
Views
558
ljwilley
ljwilley
DJRNY
Sky Fieri - insufficient space for recovery system?
2
Replies
36
Views
1K
DAllen
DAllen
ljwilley
ULTIMATE LIST OF ALL PARACHUTE MANUFACTURERS
2
Replies
33
Views
2K
spaceisthebeginning
S
UltraQ
Unable to obtain minitimer for our payload's recovery system. Any suggestions or replacements we should look into?
Replies
8
Views
525
shockie
shockie

Latest posts

Back
Top