http://blog.gmane.org/gmane.technology.rocketry.altusmetrum hourly 1 1901-01-01T00:00+00:00 http://gmane.org/img/gmane-25t.png http://gmane.org http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.technology.rocketry.altusmetrum/309 <pre>Altus Metrum releases TeleBT, AltosDroid, and AltOS 1.2.1 BLACK FOREST, Colorado USA Altus Metrum is pleased to announce the immediate availability of TeleBT, and version 1.2.1 of our AltOS software including an Android application. TeleBT is a new ground station designed to allow tracking and recovery of your rocket with an Android device. TeleBT incorporates a 70cm radio to communicate with Altus Metrum flight computers, and a Bluetooth radio that connects with Android phones and tables, and with computers running Linux that have a Bluetooth interface. TeleBT also has a micro USB connector used to charge the internal battery, and for connection to computers running Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. More information about TeleBT is available at http://altusmetrum.org/TeleBT. Our new Android application, AltosDroid, is available for free from the Google Play store, and works on most current Android devices. AltosDroid monitors your rocket flight, reporting status on the screen and through voice synthesis. Once your rocket is on the ground, you can use AltosDroid to walk to your rocket with help from Google Maps. More details about AltosDroid are available at http://altusmetrum.org/AltosDroid. AltOS 1.2.1 adds support for TeleBT, along with a number of other new features and bug fixes. This version includes updated firmware that improves radio sensitivity, along with USB fixes for many issues reported by customers running Windows. AltOS 1.2.1 also improves flight data analysis by adding configurable graph contents, additional flight summary information and a map showing the ground track of the flight. A more detailed list of AltOS changes is available along with the updated software at http://altusmetrum.org/AltOS. </pre> Bdale Garbee 2013-05-22T03:47:36 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.technology.rocketry.altusmetrum/307 <pre>Enough of you knew my plans for yesterday and have emailed asking how things went that I thought I should just report here to let you all know that I flew a TeleMega (formerly MegaMetrum) v0.3 prototype for the first time yesterday at Tripoli Colorado's research launch at the buffalo ranch near Hartsel, CO. The board flew "solo" in my 98mm test-mule "Trick-o-Treat" on a CTI J600 red motor. It was a textbook-perfect dual deploy, and the data from the u-blox GPS looks great! We haven't studied all the sensor data yet, but so far I'm *very* happy with the performance of this board version. The wind came up making it unsafe to attempt a complex flight in the airframe I threw together to try some air-starts, but we'll be at the NAR National Sport Launch all of next weekend and hope to fly more tests there. http://altusmetrum.org/TeleMega I also wanted to note that using TeleBT on a 3-element Arrow yagi along with my Galaxy S2 phone running the latest released AltosDroid from the Google Play store was huge fun! We used it even though we didn't need to during the (short) recovery walk and were pleased to note the airframe was within 2 meters of where the phone's GPS said it should be... TeleBT is in stock for shipment now, even though we haven't really officially announced it yet pending release of AltOS version 1.2. Kudos to Mike Beattie for his work on AltosDroid... there's lots more it could do, but the current version is already pretty awesome! http://altusmetrum.org/TeleBT Bdale </pre> Bdale Garbee 2013-05-20T14:58:17 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.technology.rocketry.altusmetrum/301 <pre>Hi All, So this was the maiden test flight - a modified Madcow Piranha (dual deploy with an extra 8" of length) on a G79W (which I thought should hit 800' according to Open Rocket but barely made 550 -- weirdly Madcow's simple little iphone app predicted this!). I had installed the motor ejection charge as a precaution as I had no way to ground test it. I believe the motor ejection charge fired first - just pre-apogee (the big blue acceleration spike). Looking at the 2 ejection centrifuge canisters (with 0.5g 4F) it looks like they both fired. But the voltage drops were different - the aft drogue appeared to have a tiny drop, but the main showed a huge drop. The main was set to fire at 400' (I thought it would have been about half way down from 800', but it was only down from 550). From ground observation it looked liked the 4F charge was too small to cleanly blow the chute packages (drogue was a reefed 30") out - and they seemed to wriggle out slowly and only fully inflate a 100' or so off the ground. I think this can be seen by the relatively constant descent velocity, that only slows down just before reaching ground level. Anyway, I'd love to have your experienced read on this! It was so cool having the live GPS talking during the brief flight, had a bunch of interested folk around us at NASA Ames/Moffet Field. Cheers, Winton </pre> Winton Davies 2013-05-13T18:31:16 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.technology.rocketry.altusmetrum/299 <pre>Rockets 2013 event in Fredericksburg, Texas streaming live right now...liable to see some flights with your hardware aboard. http://www.ustream.tv/channel/rockets-2013 University High School had 2 transonic attempts yesterday with the Telemetrum on board..unfortunately for all hardware.catastrophic failure. But the students had very astute observations and suggestions for the next build. Always learning.. Dennis Oubre Rockets and Robots Instructor Waco, Texas </pre> Dennis Oubre 2013-05-05T20:39:55 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.technology.rocketry.altusmetrum/294 <pre>Hi, For a brief while I was able to talk to the telemetrum, and unsuccesfully tried to fire the charges (what voltage is supposed to come across those terminals - I tried a couple of small LED's in place, 12v ones, but they didn't light up - too high a voltage requirement?). Anyway, after that, I was trying to see if I could Monitor Idle Mode etc, and I started getting "Connecting... Call Sign etc", but it just hangs. I've rebooted everything but my computer to no avail! I get 3 beeps a delay then 2 beeps and 2 short beeps (I think - my ability to count short sounds is poor). The altimeter is lying down. Cheers, Winton </pre> Winton Davies 2013-04-24T05:21:46 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.technology.rocketry.altusmetrum/284 <pre>Decimal degrees, seems to work! LUNAR "Snow Ranch" 37.949198, -120.795944 LUNAR "Moffett Field" 37.412582, -122.052290 How long does the "cache" last for? Is it just effectively "forever", except it won't be updated, or does it get purged at some point (eg 10MB exceeded, LRU?) Thanks so much! Cheers, Winton </pre> Winton Davies 2013-04-22T19:03:12 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.technology.rocketry.altusmetrum/282 <pre>Hi, I just downloaded the zip file, extracted it. But when I click on it, I get the message: "AltisUI" is damaged and can't be opened. You should move it to the Trash. Any ideas? I examined the package contents and I see the various Jars etc inside. Cheers, Winton </pre> Winton Davies 2013-04-22T18:36:17 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.technology.rocketry.altusmetrum/280 <pre>Just an FYI to those of you following our progress on unreleased products. Keith and I just renamed 'MegaMetrum' to 'TeleMega'. This is more consistent with the naming of our existing products and other things we're working on. Bdale </pre> Bdale Garbee 2013-04-22T15:39:10 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.technology.rocketry.altusmetrum/274 <pre>Ahem, in short, do not route the wires from the battery directly over the GPS antenna. It's an RF thing... We re-arranged the Telemetrum between now and the time things last worked in order to get a straighter antenna run. With a slight displacement of the battery wires, we got absolutely solid GPS lock now and are back to our state of great happiness with our TeleMetrum. :-) Thanks again, Keith! -The Falls Church HS SLI team </pre> Dan Moses (Home 2013-04-19T00:10:07 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.technology.rocketry.altusmetrum/268 <pre></pre> Dan Moses (Home 2013-04-17T10:52:23 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.technology.rocketry.altusmetrum/262 <pre>As promised, here's a "How-To" document with lots of pictures showing how to remove the protection circuit board from an Altus Metrum LiPo battery: http://altusmetrum.org/Documents/FixBattery/ Good luck! Bdale </pre> Bdale Garbee 2013-04-12T08:01:57 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.technology.rocketry.altusmetrum/252 <pre>Hi, I was hoping to get the TM into a 2.6" diam x 5" long AV bay (the Madcow one) - however my forward and rear payloads are already pretty crowded with linen, and I'd rather not have a dangling wire in there that could be ripped off. So - How much signal loss if that wire is just curved to fit the AV bay ? It'll be inside 2 layers of fibreglass, (not CF) obviously? Has anyone flown with it dangling outside through a static pressure port? Should I consider some kind of compromise - like 2" of the 7" whip antenna outside, epoxied in place to the bulkhead, with the bulk of it inside the bay, connected by an SMA-SMA coax? Has anyone gotten a good solution for this? Cheers, Winton </pre> Winton Davies 2013-04-12T01:01:34 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.technology.rocketry.altusmetrum/240 <pre>Hi all, I have two windows laptops, on the older one, I can connect directly to the Telemetrum and to the TeleDongle with no problems. On the new laptop, I can't get the computer to recognize that I've plugged into the Telemetrum. I switch the Telemetrum on, allow the Telemetrum to go through its startup sequence, then I plug it into the USB, and I get the "da-da" sound from the computer signifiying it doesn't recognize the device. If I then try to select "Configure Altimeter" from ALTOS, no devices are listed. The new computer has Java jre6, as does the old computer. Both computers are running ALTOS Rev 1.1. Can you point me in the right direction for troubleshooting? I'd really like to get the new laptop working, as the battery life is about 5X that of the old laptop. Thanks! -Todd. </pre> Todd Kerns 2013-04-11T14:10:27 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.technology.rocketry.altusmetrum/237 <pre>Hi, Having lost a beeline in an MD, I'm thinking of going GPS, and telemetrum seems like the best solution. However, I heard there's a new rev (post 1.2) in the works to deal with a reset issue? Any ideas when that'll be ready to purchase? Cheers, Winton </pre> Winton Davies 2013-04-09T17:42:04 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.technology.rocketry.altusmetrum/221 <pre>Anyone use cat5e cable for thier avionics bay? Making a small launcher for the kids, i noticed the 4 twisted pair i have would be a good match for my bay? Its good for things like telephones and data signal, but what about ematch voltage? thinking the sheething and twisted pair may be good at RF shielding? Clay </pre> Clay & Carly Dunsworth 2013-03-27T02:15:51 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.technology.rocketry.altusmetrum/219 <pre>http://surfszkola.pl/whcztztx/hwoiwlnesr/prrvf</pre> Brian Vant Hul 2013-03-16T23:39:54 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.technology.rocketry.altusmetrum/213 <pre>See attachments: A couple of transonic attempts using your brandname! Dennis Oubre Robotics &amp; Rocketry Instructor AJ Moore Academy at University High School Waco, Texas Light travels faster than sound, that's why some people appear bright until you hear them speak. - Anonymous </pre> Dennis Oubre 2013-03-07T20:57:40 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.technology.rocketry.altusmetrum/212 <pre>FYI for Debian users. The rest of you can skip this message. I ran afoul of the timing of the feature freeze for the upcoming Debian 'wheezy' release when uploading AltOS v1.1.1 packages. Rather than let wheezy release with the now-ancient 1.0.3, I requested altos be removed entirely from the current release candidate. Packages of 1.1.1 still exist in the unstable tree. My plan is to upload 1.2 to unstable as soon as we release it, then follow that up with builds for backports aimed at both squeeze and wheezy... so altos packages will continue to be available for users of Debian and derivatives such as Ubuntu... just not in the main repository for the stable release. Bdale </pre> Bdale Garbee 2013-03-07T17:54:48 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.technology.rocketry.altusmetrum/211 <pre>I just got the starter set, downloaded the AltOS for my iMac, and was able to (eventually) configure both the teledongle and a telemini. My mobile computer runs windows, so I downloaded and installed the AltOS and driver for windows, rebooted, and am able to read the live data just fine. My problem is that I cannot configure the TeleMini anymore on *either* the Mac or the Windows machines. When I am able to get past the TeleDongle "already in use" messages (see below), I get a popup indicating that the software is waiting to connect to the TeleDongle. That step never completes. I thought that the first time I got this to work the select a device dialog box actually showed the TeleMini not the TeleDongle when I clicked the "Configure Altimeter" button. Now I just see a TeleDongle in the list. Then I tried a different TeleMini (fresh and never configured) and get exactly the same results. Interesting thing is when I configure the TeleDongle I get one quick green flash out of the device. When it is "waiting to connect" (as just described) I get a continuous series of green and red flashes from the TeleDongle. Am I doing something wrong? On a related topic, I seem to frequently get into a situation where the software reports that the device I am trying to configure is "already in use". The only way around this seems to be to unplug the dongle, make sure any altimeters are off, and then plug it back in. Then I can configure the dongle. For altimeters I need to hit the "Configure Altimeter" button before the SW says "pad". I read about an idle mode, but that seems to not apply to the TeleMini. I would think that pressing either configure button should stop whatever is causing them to be in use. This could be a bit of a pain if the rocket is out on the pad and I forgot to erase the flight log memory. Thanks in advance, Joe </pre> Joe Zawodny 2013-02-23T20:17:54 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.technology.rocketry.altusmetrum/209 <pre>When I export flight data to KML, it gives me an empty file. I know there is data there, I can graph it and export to csv. But no joy on KML. Any ideas?   Thank you, David</pre> David Abmayr 2013-02-10T17:55:23 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.technology.rocketry.altusmetrum/208 <pre>When I export flight data to KML, it gives me an empty file. I know there is data there, I can graph it and export to csv. But no joy on KML. Any ideas? Thank you, David Sorry about the double post- sent the first from the wrong email account. </pre> David Abmayr 2013-02-10T18:03:56 Search the mailing list at Gmane query http://search.gmane.org/?group=$group=gmane.technology.rocketry.altusmetrum