Our Senior Project is to build a rocket that can obtain launch data, take photos, and finally send this data through Bluetooth the user's app.
Mission Statement:
Through diligence and dedication, our goal is to deliver a stable imaging and sensing device for model rockets that is small, lightweight, and better than current solutions.
Project Description
Our project is to build a rocket that can perform aerial photography. This is useful because model rockets are an accessible way of reaching high altitudes, which produces extraordinary photos. There are many drone based aerial photography systems, but most of them would not be able to reach the altitudes that a rocket can. There are commercial model rockets with cameras, but these are expensive, have low resolution, cant store many images, and have poor interfaces. We believe that we can do better.
The main challenge of designing the rocket is the imaging system. A rocket has limited space inside it, and a small circular cross-section. This places significant constraints on what electronics can fit inside it. This prevents the use of established boards such as Raspberry Pis, or other development boards. As a result, we must design a board that can take images that contains all the parts we need in a small form factor. This will require significant engineering. We also will need to design the rocket so that all of the components will come safely back to Earth.
To accomplish this we have a team of four Computer Engineering students working on this project. We propose to have this design working by end of November.
Team Members:
Marlon Granda
Douglas Karmondy
Nick Manuell
Samuel Zachary
Schedule
Milestones
Order Dev Boards / Breakout Boards
Team Members: All
Testing Strategy: Make sure they come by Sep 10th.
Get basic info from sensor boards
Team Members: Doug Karmondy
Testing Strategy: Get pressure sensor (MPL3115A2) and Gyroscope (LSM6DS3) breakout boards transmitting data through UART. Also make sure that the results make sense.
Interface with SD card
Team Members: Sam Zachary
Testing Strategy: Write data to SD card. Insert SD card into computer and check that the written data is valid.
Interface With Camera
Team Members: Sam Zachary
Testing Strategy: Send image over UART. View image to make sure it's not garbage.
Basic Bluetooth Communication to Android Phone
Team Members:Nick Manuell and Marlon Granda
Testing Strategy: Double check layout and footprints, show to Jon Davies for advice.
Team Members: Nick Manuell, Marlon Granda
Testing Strategy: Small messages like "Hello World" will be sent from the microcontroller to an android phone, and we will check for accuracy.
Work on the UI of the app
Team Members: Nick Manuell
Testing Strategy: Ask people to try out my app and ask them about the layout.
Work on the app's rocket page
Team Members: Nick Manuell
Testing Strategy: Make rocket profiles and give the app premade data for testing the functionality and performance of the app.
Design Camera Board
Team Members: TBD
Testing Strategy: Double check schematic, show to Jon Davies for advice.
Layout Camera Board
Team Members: TBD
Testing Strategy: Double check layout and footprints, show to Jon Davies for advice.
Fig.1 - (LSM6DS3) This 6 degrees of freedom gyroscope and accelerometer development board has been purchased and arrived during the summer. We have been spending time getting it connected to our STM32F0 board and displaying data. Fig.2 - (MPL3115A2) This pressure sensor development board ahs been purchased and arived during the summer. We are currently getting it connected to our STM32F0 board and having it display data through UART communication.
