Rocket Pipe Dreams

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I would say that my approachable pipe dream would be something along the lines of:

Building a scale model, on my own (not from a kit) that an official judge would say something like "Good first effort. I liked xxx, you did pretty good at yyy, but you really need to work on zzz. I'd say next year you could make the top 5."

If I could do that, it would indicate I have gotten more control on my skill development and patience. Both of those skills are helpful in both rocketry and real life and while I thought I was on top of them 10 years ago, I feel like its new material now-a-days. . .

Cool thread.

Sandy.
 
Build a rocket that releases an autonomous glider at apogee. The glider will circle the field taking video and finally land near the flight line. Will use a combination of Arduino, Pixhawk and Raspberry to control release, guidance and landing. I am slowly learning Arduino and Raspberry and am working on a few projects that will get me one step closer. But that will probably be after my L3 and for sure after I finish up all the builds and repairs I have in the works.

Build a full scale Goddard rocket. Would make a nice L3 project. Would also be awesome on a hybrid, if I knew anything about hybrids.
 
So learn something about hybrids.

As for the autonomous glider (great idea) why three microcontrollers? I just googled Pixhawk, the self-proclaimed "hardware standard for open-source autopilots". While that proclamation is the sum total of my knowledge of it, that seems like it should handle the glider by itself. The flight computer on the rocket will do apogee detection and can handle releasing the glider along with drogue deployment (by which I don't mean simultaneously with; that would lead to Bad ThingsTM:)). What are the Arduino and R-Pi for? Especially, why Arduino and R-Pi, rather than or?
 
So learn something about hybrids.

As for the autonomous glider (great idea) why three microcontrollers? I just googled Pixhawk, the self-proclaimed "hardware standard for open-source autopilots". While that proclamation is the sum total of my knowledge of it, that seems like it should handle the glider by itself. The flight computer on the rocket will do apogee detection and can handle releasing the glider along with drogue deployment (by which I don't mean simultaneously with; that would lead to Bad ThingsTM:)). What are the Arduino and R-Pi for? Especially, why Arduino and R-Pi, rather than or?

With the servo support and multi channels on the likes of the Quantum and Proton, I can surely use one of those to handle deployment, but designing my own flight computer with my own UI is intriguing. And the Pi will be a ground unit to do whatever I need it to do. Yeah I can use a laptop but I want it to be a one of a kind ground station. Can use it to turn on flight computer, activate Pixhawk, start camera in rocket, etc all in one simple UI.
I know little more than you about the Pixhawk. Not sure if it can deploy the glider wings once it is out of the rocket. Or, if they are spring loaded, lock them into place; simple task for Arduino.

Yeah, I I suppose I shoulda used and/or.
 
I use Ardupilot on my flight controller for my Vertical Trajectory System. If your Pixhawk has 2MB of flash you can run Ardupilot and run a scripting language called LUA which is great. You can do great things with that firmware on your side.
 
I know Charles has an impressive sounding rocket fleet. To the best of my knowledge, they don't share a common, single scale. So some of the pieces can be Tinkertoyed together, if I'm remembering right, they can't all be.

Could take Tremendous Teri's place. I want to keep "Titanic Titania", and it'll be hard to beat Tiny Tina. "Minute Mini" maybe.
Micro Mary just popped into my head, possibly due to a recent visit by the in-laws ;)
 
I use Ardupilot on my flight controller for my Vertical Trajectory System. If your Pixhawk has 2MB of flash you can run Ardupilot and run a scripting language called LUA which is great. You can do great things with that firmware on your side.
I'm a Lua fan, tho probably biased bcuz I use Ruby a lot and Lua is akin to a simplified and quite compact version of Ruby. Lua is also a very popular scripting language for video games, tho I haven't used it for that
 
Huh.. all the variants of.. the AMRAMM or Bullpup or..
I've thought of doing that with the Bullpup as well. Also the Honest John. Both of which I have some headway on. I've also built an Estes Mini Honest John as an 18 mm and 'minimum diameter" 24mm. I think I'm gonna need to fill the nose with lead shot to make that baby stable tho lol
 
Honest John.
I've heard some of the many people who build Honest John models (or fleets) refer to them as Ho Jo. It makes me want to build an odd roc that's a model of a Howard Johnson's.

With the servo support and multi channels on the likes of the Quantum and Proton, I can surely use one of those to handle deployment, but designing my own flight computer with my own UI is intriguing.
Yeah, the former ks what I was thinking. As long as the off the shelf flight computer has an extra event output, it could do the glider release, and the wings could be spring loaded so a single release event does the trick. If you want to go that way.

If you want to design your own , more capable flight computer, you might start with a Rocketduino.

I was mainly wondering why both an Arduino and an R-Pi; the Pi for a ground station makes sense.
 
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If you want to design your own , more capable flight computer, you might start with a Rocketduino.

I was mainly wondering why both an Arduino and an R-Pi; the Pi for a ground station makes sense.
Add a LoRa pi hat and you could likely get some telemetry as previously discussed, but could likely trigger events remotely too. Anything very low bandwidth of course, but enough to change a bit state. I don't think I'm saying you guys don't already know, I'm just kinda spit balling out loud
 
The pictures of commercial boards and folks' layouts appear to take little consideration for EMI, and nome for shielding to prevent it. Of course, there's no miracle cure-all, but there are well known EMI best practices that can go a long way. And, of course, pictures can be deceiving.
 
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