Rocket Flight Controller and Logger

(Photo credit vice.com)

The pressure is on for us to get a prototype ready for International Rocketry Week 2015 at Lapwing Lodge near Glasgow in Scotland! This event, only a week away, is a very popular week-long camp in a rural area at the top of Britain where amateurs can come from all over the world to launch their rockets. One of our project members, Phil, has been attending for years and wants to attempt a very high launch this year for which he wants the flight computer ready to record!

We have the boards back from the fab house (Elecrow) and Matt, the main hardware designer, is hastily assembling some for various members of the team to play with their parts so they can work on the embedded software. My part (Laurence) is the Chrome app and USB connection for programming. I am currently looking at USB-CDC and USB-Serial at the moment, although USB-HID is also possible if it works out easier. Making the system work on PC is one challenge, but getting it happy on Android is another! For IRW we would be happy with just PC comms, but it would be nice to demonstrate phone-only programming to the other fliers there.