or,
This is my presentation for NARCON 2010 (was NEMROC 2008 … see below), summarizing my efforts over the last three years since 2006 toward building a model rocket that won’t get lost.
The idea is that it carries a GPS and a steerable parachute, so it steers itself back to the launch pad on the way down.
An introduction to the project is in the PowerPoint presentation below. Fair warning: It’s 60 Mbytes.
Update January 2010: I’ve posted all the hardware design and source code for the “Rev 3” hardware on this site. The main index to the series of posts is here.
Update March 2010: I’ve replaced the presentation with a slightly updated version that I presented at NARCON 2010. It discusses a little about the “Rev 4” hardware, based on the 32-bit PIC32 MCU, toward the end. Download all 3 files (and put them in the same folder) if you want the Google Earth links to work.
2010-03 NARCON Presentation.ppt (PowerPoint file)
1004_f2_pressure.kml (Google Earth .KML file, flight of 2008-10-04)
1101f2_pressure.kml (Google Earth .KML file, flight of 2008-11-01)
If PowerPoint is an issue, here’s a PDF version of the slides (15 MB):
#1 by Marcelo on 2008 November 23 - 15:34
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Hi,
Nice project! Any videos published or news on how it’s going on?
Marcelo
#2 by Dave on 2008 November 23 - 18:33
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Thanks. This talk was from early this month (November 2008) so it’s pretty much up to date.
Things are going a bit slower now as I don’t have as much time to work on it as I used to (pressure of business stuff).
I’m still hopeful that I’ll get the GPS guidance thing working by the fall of 2009 – the flying season here (Boston) has just ended.
I _will_ post the CAD files for the PCBs and the firmware on this site, Real Soon Now.
–Dave
#3 by Daniel on 2010 June 10 - 15:35
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Dave,
Very cool project… can’t wait to see more..