This is the site where Bdale Garbee and friends are documenting work on a series of open hardware and software designs of avionics solutions for high powered model rocketry. Everything here should be considered a work in process! # AltusMetrum

A quick update as of 24 November 2008. The existing ARM7-based design has been shelved indefinitely. Working with Keith Packard, I recently embarked on a complete redesign based on the TI cc1111. We got there by deciding we need a low-power RF beacon for post-landing direction finding, learning of the existence of this part, then realizing that we could radically simplify things by using it as the basis for a completely new avionics design. The cc1111 integrates a full 70cm transceiver, 8051 processing core, and peripherals on one chip. We add to that a barometric sensor, temperature sensor, accelerometer, eeprom memory, and full LiPo battery support powered by a USB interface also used for configuration and post-flight data extraction. It looks like we can get all the features we want on a single board for less than the price of most commercial altimeter boards, with the only downside being dramatically reduced processing power. The schematic is under design review now, PCB layout will begin soon, and we hope to be turning on boards and writing firmware over the Christmas / New Years holiday season. Stay tuned!

Welcome LCA, SCALE, and OLS 2008 attendees! Thanks for looking, but there's not much here yet...

Information on the OpenAlt model rocketry avionics system coming very soon!

Here are photos of the version 0.1 PCB, which has enough issues to not be worth duplicating. Version 0.2 is coming soon, and will be fully documented on this site!

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