1 == Introduction and Overview
3 Welcome to the Altus Metrum community! Our circuits and software reflect
4 our passion for both hobby rocketry and Free Software. We hope their
5 capabilities and performance will delight you in every way, but by
6 releasing all of our hardware and software designs under open licenses,
7 we also hope to empower you to take as active a role in our collective
10 Our goal is to include in this document all of the information required
11 to successfully configure and use Altus Metrum products. But
12 documentation is a lot like software in that it can contain "bugs",
13 and can probably always be improved! If you have questions that
14 aren't answered in this manual, or just need a little help figuring
15 things out, we strongly suggest joining the Altus Metrum user email
16 list, which you can do by visiting
17 https://lists.gag.com/mailman/listinfo/altusmetrum. There's a lot
18 of useful information in the mailing list archives!
20 The first device created for our community was TeleMetrum, a dual
21 deploy altimeter with fully integrated GPS and radio telemetry
22 as standard features, and a “companion interface” that will
23 support optional capabilities in the future. The latest version
24 of TeleMetrum, v2.0, has all of the same features but with
25 improved sensors and radio to offer increased performance.
27 Our second device was TeleMini, a dual deploy altimeter with
28 radio telemetry and radio direction finding. The first version
29 of this device was only 13mm by 38mm (½ inch by 1½ inches) and
30 could fit easily in an 18mm air-frame. The latest version, v3.0,
31 includes a beeper, higher power radio, extended on-board
32 flight logging and an improved barometric sensor.
34 TeleMega is our most sophisticated device, including six pyro
35 channels (four of which are fully programmable), integrated GPS,
36 integrated gyroscopes for staging/air-start inhibit and high
37 performance telemetry.
39 EasyMini is a dual-deploy altimeter with logging and built-in
42 EasyMega is essentially a TeleMega board with the GPS receiver
43 and telemetry transmitter removed. It offers the same 6 pyro
44 channels and integrated gyroscopes for staging/air-start inhibit.
46 TeleDongle v0.2 was our first ground station, providing a USB to RF
47 interfaces for communicating with the altimeters. Combined with
48 your choice of antenna and notebook computer, TeleDongle and our
49 associated user interface software form a complete ground
50 station capable of logging and displaying in-flight telemetry,
51 aiding rocket recovery, then processing and archiving flight
52 data for analysis and review. The latest version, TeleDongle
53 v3, has all new electronics with a higher performance radio
56 For a slightly more portable ground station experience that also
57 provides direct rocket recovery support, TeleBT offers flight
58 monitoring and data logging using a Bluetooth™ connection between
59 the receiver and an Android device that has the AltosDroid
60 application installed from the Google Play store.
62 More products will be added to the Altus Metrum family over time, and
63 we currently envision that this will be a single, comprehensive manual
64 for the entire product family.