Sensors

[Sooner Boomer]

What sensors would you want to send up on (in) a rocket you could build? The obvious ones are:
GPS (position, altitude/velocity)
accelleration (mulit-axis could indicate tilt from vertical)
roll rate
pressure
temperature
humidity

 

[dhbarr]

magnetometer

 

[SparkyVT]

A gyro is a better sensor for determining tilt. Once airborne, the 1G reference is gone and its much more difficult to determine tilt accurately with an accelerometer. However, gyros by themselves require additional onboard math in the form of quaternions (or some other clever algorithm) to convert roll rates into 3D orientation.

Also, don't forget sensors that will report system status. Here's a few that come to mind:

main battery voltage
pyro continuity
pyro resistance check
pyro amperage

 

[Funkworks]

To someone like me, these also qualify as "sensors":

camera (still or video)
radio receiver (pick a frequency, any frequency!)

Of course, each one could spawn its own sub-list and this may not be the thread to do that.

 

[Voyager1]

I have been using an Adalogger with a 10 DoF IMU for collecting rocket data for science mentoring with high school student experiments. The senor module includes the following:

• Adxl345 accelerometer
• ITG3200 gyro
• HMC5883L Compass
• BMP280 temperature & barometer sensor

I did originally include GPS, but that was overkill for this study.