One of the most fundamental pieces of equipment for all rockets is the Flight Computer, without it you would just have a missile coming down after launch. Because the most common approach to flight computers is to simply purchase a pre-configured flight computer we had been doing that for while. Only recently have we started our iterative design process towards a true smart Flight computer capable to supporting a hybrid engine and handling active breaking/ throttling. By designing our own custom flight computer we can thoroughly test it to get certified to launch without the need of a commercially available board.
What is unique about our design is that we went for a wedding cake style board layout, where we could essentially keep stacking circular boards on top of each other to add more components to our designs, making it much more modular.
What is unique about our design is that we went for a wedding cake style board layout, where we could essentially keep stacking circular boards on top of each other to add more components to our designs, making it much more modular.
Flight Computer Mk.IV
This was the first functional flight computer tested at an actual launch.
Specs:
Specs:
- ATmega328p Microcontroller
- Utilized 2 commercially available flight computers and read data off of it to test data logging
- LoRa modules to allow for low power long distance communications [Did not work]
- Auxiliary power supply for backup power using comparator circuit
- SD card module for data logging ability