16-year-old pupil Marcelo Goluboff has designed a management board for mannequin rockets, constructed round a Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller and providing an on-board inertial measurement unit (IMU), twin temperature sensors, strain sensing, and connectivity for exterior {hardware} together with a thrust-vector management interface.
“The Starlight Rocket Management Unit is good for mannequin rocketry,” Goluboff explains of his creation. “Designed to be used in 75mm diameter rocket tubes, it ensures accuracy and stability on your subsequent launch. With sensors resembling strain, temperature, gyroscope, and accelerometer all packaged onto the board, this board means that you can monitor each a part of your mannequin rocket throughout lift-off and restoration!”
The Starlight is a Raspberry Pi RP2040-based board which brings options particular to mannequin rocketry to the desk. (📷: Circuit Wizardry)
These sensors, fitted to the board as commonplace, are comprised of a TDK InvenSense ICM-42605 six-axis inertial measurement unit with three-axis gyroscope and three-axis accelerometer, a Bosch Sensortec BMP388 absolute barometric strain sensor, and two separate temperature sensors — chosen to supply redundancy, Goluboff explains.
These are all linked to a Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller, with a level-shifter including assist for 5V servo motors for an elective thrust vectoring system — steering the thrust of the rocket to supply finer-grained management.
The board is designed to be used in widespread 75mm diameter rocket tubes, like this 7.5″ T-LOC. (📷: LOC Precision)
Different board options embody 16MB of flash reminiscence with Execute In-Place (XIP) assist, six 3.3V general-purpose enter/output (GPIO) pins plus two 5V pins separate to the 2 servo ports, SPI, I2C, and UART buses, and assist for 5-18V energy — plus a high-power “igniter” pin to be used with ignition programs, one other for ejection programs, . Programming, in the meantime, is over a micro-USB connector — with a MicroPython library offered.
Extra info on the board may be discovered on Goluboff’s web site, with instance MicroPython code on GitHub below an unspecified open supply license; fully-assembled boards can be found on the Circuit Wizardry Tindie retailer at $49.99.
