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):
Hi,
Nice project! Any videos published or news on how it’s going on?
Marcelo
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
Dave,
Very cool project… can’t wait to see more..