Designing an Arduino-based Rocket Flight Computer for Embedded Systems Education

As amateur model rockets get more advanced, flight computers are included. They offer many benefits and enable users to include more advanced features like data logging, location tracking, thrust vector control (TVC), delayed ignition charge activation, and active component actuation. Of-the-shelf flight computers can be quite expensive, but may offer few customization options. This may lead to budget challenges for amateur rocketry projects. Working directly with complex hardware and low-level software can be intimidating for most, so development boards have been created to make amateur projects more accessible. Therefore, there is a desire to develop a low-cost flight computer suitable for all budgets, which is where microcontroller platforms like Arduino excel. The Arduino platform has many community resources and easy-to-use software, like the Arduino IDE. An inexpensive, full-featured, and modifiable Arduino-based rocket flight computer was designed based on the Arduino Mega microcontroller. This computer is compatible with the Arduino IDE as well as the standard Arduino Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL). Common sensors like an accelerometer, barometer, and altimeter can provide the user with many different options for flight data logging and active control. On-board memory was also included to store flight data. In addition, the computer can drive high-power components like servos and ignition charges. To make software development more accessible for beginners, a comprehensive software package simplifies access to many of the sensors, communication, and external components, and a simple programming interface can be used to extract the data. Examples of certain control algorithms, like TVC, were developed to demonstrate their capabilities to users.