Model Rocket Payload and Grounds Station
During my first year of college, I joined a club called the Rocketry Club. At the time, I had no interest in model rockets at all, however I was intrigued by their booth because I noticed they had an STM-32 micro-controller on display. I had never worked with micro-controllers, but I had some programming experience, so I decided to join. At the time, they were using the STM-32 as a payload to record data about the rocket while it was in the air. This payload they created, however, was fairly primitive and saved all the data on an SD card that had to be physically removed from the rocket after the launch. I wanted to create a more useful payload so with the help of a few other students we created a payload that used HC-12 Radio modules to downlink the rocket data in real time. I used the jSerialComm library to send data from the grounds station (an Arduino with a radio module wired up to it) to my laptop. After I retrieved the data, I had to decode it (the data was compressed to increase efficiency) and I displayed the data in real time using a GUI created with JFreeChart and JavaFX. Using JFreeChart I created a live graph of the altitude of the rocket, and I also displayed the gyration and acceleration on the X, Y, and Z, axis of the rocket. This project was a super fun way to introduce me to micro-controllers and graphing data : - ). Huge thanks to Jeremiah Lowe, Nathaniel Vetters, and Jody for collaborating with me on the project.
Payload We created
All Who Worked on the Project!
