Arduino Stabilized Model Rocket 

YES!

SO TRUE!!!

Yes. So yes.

+Bernhard Hofmann I was entertained that the tape was sticking to his finger while he was putting it in his pocket. I would like to have seen a little more trouble in this area while he still talks about his project.

+Claudia ft Privacy Yes. You programm it once on the computer, transfer it to the arduino and after that you just have to apply power to it and it starts what you programmed on it.

XPLOREanXPLODE cool, that is interesting :-) Thank you for answering.

Daniel Craig I am not that far yet, i just bought one to see how it functions and how i can program it :-D It is very interesting i didn't hear before about this platform.

Claudia ft Privacy It's one of the most known platform before the Raspberry Pi actually :D btw. there is also an Arduino Nano version which is a lot smaller, if you maybe want to do some smaller circuits.

XPLOREanXPLODE That didn't reached me ether, i was still busy with electronic components. If i would have known this before then it would had saved me hours and hours of time from designing and calculating.

He is sensing tilt with an gyroscope sensor

Edward Clements It tries to assume the first orientation it booted up with, so same software, different boot-up procedure.

At the time I built it your best bet would have been to feed the signal to a ground based computer, do your processing, and send the control parameters back to the rocket. Doable for sure, but rockets are pretty violent, so sending and receiving an uninterrupted signal reliably might be tough (check out BPS space channel for some insight). Nowadays there are some pretty powerful and tiny SOCs that might enable you to do it all onboard. The newest Raspberry PIs are about as powerful as my 2015 laptop, for example. It all gets dangerously close to "guided missile" however. :)

+Ragtime78rpm The chute ejected successfully on all launches, it just failed to open. It added enough drag that it could land safely... sort of. Each time it happened to land in just the right orientation as to protect the fins from damage. On the first landing the nose cone actually penetrated the ground and was standing on end. :)

+JiveFowl Lawn dart! I love it. Sounds like a plastic rather than a balsa nose cone - unless the ground there was pretty soft. Thanks for responding. I wish you every success in your future endeavors.

Merci!

I used an IMU (inertial measurement unit) breakout board. It was 9 axis plus barometer. I read the values through SPI. Or I²c, I can't remember. Either way, check out Sparkfun or Hobbyking for these sensors, they're cheap and pretty easy to use. (Sparkfun also usually has circuit examples and good documentation, which you can use even if you order some generic part from Amazon!)

That's super cool! Getting an accurate altitude at high frequency is pretty tough. The BMP180 has some configuration options that may increase the rate you get data back at the cost of precision and noise. The low-power mode samples fewer times for its result, and so will give you quicker responses. Altimeters also rely on temperature for accurate measurements, which inherently takes a while to change, making the problem worse. The breakout that I used had 10 DOF, including a baro, so it afforded the opportunity to apply sensor fusion to the altitude of the module. You can calculate the position using the accelerometer, but since it's a double-integral to get the position, it's only accurate for less than second. The baro is the opposite; it's accurate over a few seconds, and the longer the better. The idea is you can measure the immediate change in acceleration, calculate a precise change in position, and keep it in the ballpark with the barometer. This guy seems to have some source and information on exactly this: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-TaqtzG7lyp0.html Good luck!

Ok. Thanks a lot!

There's a larger brass tube holding the smaller tubes, and the paper tube was cut strategically to allow the bigger brass tube to slide in and be glued/taped in place. It was pretty messy overall. Can't argue with results though!

lmao noob

Nope, something of my own design. Basically just a manually tuned proportional system. Very basic. It probably wouldn't work past a certain speed.

Probably something like an Arduino Uno, they have a lot of pins and there are many peripheral boards available with all sorts of sensors and controllers. Honestly, any of them are good to learn on; I'd suggest buying a kit of some kind, since things like buttons, LEDs, breadboards and jumper cables are important, and costs can add up if you buy them one at a time. Sparkfun.com is a little expensive, but they know what they're doing and put together good kits with great learning material. Watch a few videos to get the hang of how things mesh together. Tested.com has a decent video, an ILikeToMakeStuff.com also has some approachable material. Have fun! :)

set up the software as a plane and will try to stabalize as plane but upwards?

+squadleader1966 Kudos!

+Jonathan Streech That would require all the servos to be in the same position along the Y axis, and the fuselage doesnt have enough room for that. The way he designed it allows for a staggered arrangement.

A good one.

Erik Scow I put all the electronic bits in the nose section, thus the canard setup. The ejection charge splits the rocket in half, rather than just the nose cone. If I were you I'd be tempted to channel the ejection charge gasses through a reinforced straw to push the chute out. Or use a push rod and piston to toss it out. But those are probably prone to catastrophic failure. :)

Erik Scow Oh and as for the reason mine didn't work, I made my parachute out of a garbage bag, and it was too thick to successfully deploy. Shame. The astronauts made it to space but didn't make it back.

Cant believe I didn't think of that. Thank you for the help!

Personally I was thinking of using one of those single use CO2 cartridges if I couldn't use the engine ejection charge.

I think it was a C6-4. Standard model rocket engine.

+JiveFowl Thanks

How does the parachute not work? That's like the most simple part of the project.

Because of the electronics above the rocket engine. Parachutes are deployed by the top of the engine bursting up into the rocket fuselage pushing out the parachute and nose cone.

It was a DSLR with a non-parfocal lens and no autofocus capability while recording, so it's a far cry from any broadcast system you've used... and thanks! It was a fun project!

JiveFowl Hay, don't knock that DSLR. These days, that's broadcast quality! I used a Sony prosumer camera to make a number of programs that aired. The rocket, Arduino idea is really cool. The software is so important and often overlooked by the novice (me). I was watching a RU-vid about a 4WD robot that could not drive and compute objects in the way at the same time. Stop-start-stop... Now I admire what my home robot vacuum cleaner can do even more, still has not taken out my cat!

I think it was a Turnigy 2s 120mah from Hobbyking.

Hi! I am trying to make a rocket model,, which measures the altitude of its flight. I have working code which i wrote, but now I don't know how do I make a rescue system. If i put arduino on top, like you did, how can the parachute come out from the inside? How did you make it? (Sry for bad English)

Миша Мыколышин I used an Estes rocket that splits in the middle for the recovery system. That way I could put all the brains in the top, everything else in the bottom. There are a couple that would work, any of the payload ones (like for launching chicken eggs) would work great!

JiveFowl Actually I made the rocket myself, but I am using Estes C6-3 engine and I wonder, can I make the rescue system in the middle by myself?

That would be a rather small surface to air missile.

bxxj I always thought it was a stupid law as a model rocket is not much more dangerous if it has a guidance system since it's short range.To make it an effective guided missile it would need IR or radar sensors,a longer burn time,proximity sensors,and be able to carry a warhead that weights a few pounds.Plus high power rockets probably can made safer if they have a reliable guidance system.

rockets were the symbol of power and cutting edge technology in the post WWII space race and cold war. different time and values. Today laws aren't written as specifically as in the 50's. today they use terms like "weapons of mass destruction" or "terrorist" which pretty much includes anything they want it to. avionics are allowed in other flying platforms because many commercial interests have been identified making them good for more than a weapons platform.

If you can't write it yourself, you probably don't know what you are doing and shouldn't attempt this.

Gyros

Using a arduino, gyroscope, and some servo motors, like a 15 min programming + the time to make the model rocket. Nothing fancy here.

jdraper12 agree

@@abdbach379Nothing fancy? LOL. I assure you, it's not 15 minutes of programming.

​ @Amal Lee OK I may have been a bit harsh. It's more like 30 minutes.

its probably just code . but the electronics is an arduino nano and some servos + a 3 axis gyro/accelerometer and the arduino board is programmed by arduino ide

radio shack still exists?

+Matthew Bernard Nah. It's only a hundred lines or so, fairly simple math. Very hacky. Were I to release it I'd be afraid of someone doing something stupid with it and blaming me somehow. It's too much trouble for what it offers to the general public. I explain the majority of it in the video. Really all it does is get the dot product of each "fin" and the "up" direction and fudges that into a servo output. The trims are hard coded, the coefficients done by eye... it's a mess. :)

JiveFowl just curious what is the purpose of finding the dot product of the fins for? I’m curious into rocket stabilization, and any advice would help thanks!

Nothing big, something like Estes B6-2. It only went up about 150ft/50m, any more power and I'd worry about the stability of the control system. Also there were houses nearby. :)

@@JiveFowl tnx

@@JiveFowl that you even react on a reaction for a 7 year old video most people dont

max enzo There's no warhead and targeting system it's just self adjusting.

A rocket that can guide itself is a lot safer than one that cannot.

+Olli Queck probbably, but the gyroscope is the most important for guidance anyhow.

+Olli Queck One uses the fusion of info from both the sensor to make the most sense. Gyro maintains angles well but suffers from long term drift. Accelero's are prone to all the short impulsive inertial forces but don't suffer from long term drift. So the accelero data filtered out is able to tell down from up and is used to calibrate the gyro. For instantaneous directions , gyro is referred to .

+Olli Queck G-forces aren't that high. I think I worked it out to about 6? Accelerometer is good to 16 (that is, the values are scaled and clamped to 16; its operational range is probably in the hundreds to thousands) and the gyro is unfazed by whatever I can throw at it. Regardless, I didn't do any sensor fusion in this project, threw out everything but the gyro. Its drift is only a few degrees a minute, so as long as I launch it within a couple minutes, it goes about where you pointed it. :)

please please please

It's just an Estes C6 engine. They're available at most hobby shops in North America - there should be something similar available pretty much world wide.

Thank you for helping I am really want to develop rocket but I am not sure about FAA rules, Do you have any suggestion about it, please?

These are hobby rockets. No license needed or rules to follow. Well.. don't ignite your neighbor's cat. Kind of an unwritten rule. Go to the mall and buy a kit to get yourself started.

This is a research project.

I had the same thought but I believe those regulations pertain to guided rockets. Although this rocket is gimbaled for stabilization, it is not actually guided. They may also not pertain to hobby engines and only to certain classes with a minimum total impulse. I don't know the details of the regulations though.