Model rocketry, for many, means stuffing a motor and parachute inside a cardboard tube-based kit, igniting it externally, then watching it soar into the air. As fun as that can be, to upgrade your rocketry experience, check out the Rockit flight computer from Dan Invents.
The device features a powerful RP2040 microcontroller for processing. An MS5637 barometric-based altimeter is used for flight tracking, along with an accelerometer that can measure up to 22.6g on the main axis of the rocket, and 16g in a perpendicular orientation. The device can sense temperature values and has a microSD card slot for data logging, allowing you to review flight data later.
The Rockit flight computer can also be used to control parachute deployment via two servo motors (or, in theory, other functions). These can be set up for automatic altitude-based deployment, or on a timer, and the start/end servo positions can also be adjusted as needed. A battery connector/charger is also provided onboard, as well as a piezo buzzer, useful to help find your rocket after a flight.
The Rockit logger/controller comes with a micro USB port for programming, allowing you to change the overall behavior of this device to suit your needs. The code and more info is available on GitHub.
For several years when I was younger, I was obsessed with building models. Everything from the Titanic, to military aircraft, to muscle cars. It was something my dad and I enjoyed doing together, and he helped me with some of the more intricate pieces as kid.
In the world of 3D printing, it makes complete sense to create a model kit using this technology. That’s why this 3D-printed model of the Russian Soyuz-FG rocket is a great way to bring back that classic hobby.
The kit comes in 39 pieces, and everything fits together. Some pieces will be loose when compared to others, so using glue is smart to keep everything together when it’s finished. The final size is 90x90x540mm.
If you’ve never built a model like this before, this is a great place to start!
The Flame Trench is a group of British and American students and professionals interested in model rocketry. While their portfolio certainly includes the rockets that you might have launched as a kid, some of their exploits involve rockets taller than a human, attempts to break altitude records, and even thrust vectoring via BPS Space with the end-goal of landing a model rocket vertically under power. You know, the kind of stuff SpaceX has been doing so successfully these days.
I got to catch up with member Ben Cartwright, who in addition to his experiments, operates a new Flame Trench Tindie store. Items for sale there include stickers for marking the center (or centre as he resides in the UK) of gravity and pressure for your model aeronautical equipment, as well as disk-shaped electronics prototyping platforms meant to fit inside the cones of model rockets.
As with many of us, Ben has always been interested in electronics in some respect. His dad started him off with model planes and helicopters as a young child, and since then the magic of invisibly moving electrons about to do his bidding had him hooked. After quite a bit of study, and discovering his love of space and rocketry along the way, he’s about to get a Master’s degree in Electronic Engineering and Computer Science. After that, he has a job lined up at RAL Space (the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory) upon graduation.
The Flame Trench Organization was looking at building hardware and kits to sell for the model rocketry community in the UK. Tindie was a perfect platform for selling this type of product. While their product offerings are currently limited to what’s seen below, they’ve got several exciting projects in the works, including flight computers, rocket altimeters, image sensors, and more.
Ben Cartwright and the Flame Trench are quite new to Tindie, having just opened in Mid-March of this year, but Ben describes it as “super simple to use,” and notes that the “quality of the content on there is fantastic!” Having listed a few things here myself, I’d wholeheartedly agree with it being easy to use. If you’ve ever written a blog post on WordPress, or put a project on Hackaday.io or similar, listing a product here is equally simple.
He does note that there’s currently not a lot on Tindie from the model rocketry community, but he hopes to change that. We’re looking forward to it, and invite anyone else who has a rocketry related gadget to sell to get it into a Tindie store of their own.
It’s always fun to get together (whether virtually or in real life) with those who share common interests, and swapping ideas could even save you from having to reinvent the wheel solid rocket engine! For a preview of the kind of projects that Flame Trench members take on, check out the BPSspace promo video below:
For another take on high altitude experimentation, you might also check out the CatSat1. While high altitude ballooning might not have the same kind of high speed excitement as model rocketry, getting a glimpse of the earth from far above using your own equipment has to be amazing as well.
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