Meta
These weeks focus was mostly around getting this Patreon page up. This meant that I had to create some kind of vision for the near future (obviously launching some awesome model rockets), but also what kind of content I’d like to create during the entire process. Now that’s finally gaining some shape, I also started looking at defining short-term goals and initial estimates for deliverables. I’m still looking into the best way to share these rough plannings out in the public. I’ve never done this before (so it’s also a bit scary 😉).
On the hardware side of things
Connectivity
Other than the things mentioned above I’ve received a Bluetooth breakout board, so I’ll be looking to solder the headers on, and trying to get some initial feeling for how easy or hard it’ll be to get some communication going. This also means that I’ll have to start with an initial mobile app because I wish to control everything out in the field from a mobile phone. Initially, the focus here will be to being able to read out the orientation values from the TVC kit. I hope to be able to render some kind of graph of the X, Y, and Z-axis that will give me easy insight into the orientation of the rocket itself. I also ordered some new Wi-Fi breakout boards that soon might be used to create an ad hoc Wi-Fi network between a smartphone and the launch pad, possibly using the launch pad as a relay to communicate with the rocket, but this is all farther down the line and currently not a priority.
Parts design
I’m also still finishing up the flight computer mount that will hold the flight computer (duh) inside the rocket’s body tube. The thing I’m still struggling with is how to place the 9-DOF (Dimensions of Freedom) sensor so that it will deliver consistent and reliable values that can be used to determine the orientation of the rocket.
On the software side of things
On the software side of things, until now I’ve tried out some hardware components by directly coding in the Arduino IDE, this is great for quick prototyping and trying some things out, but since I’m trying to organize things like more like a regular software project, I’ve started to migrate stuff towards the PlatformIO approach, which will allow for things such as creation of unit tests, but also a more logical file structuring and proper separation of concerns so that will make it all a bit more professional.
