Control Unit for a Model Rocket

Abstract

With the ever increasing density of computational power and with simultaneous decrease of cost of integrated circuits and sensors, there are fields, where active control is just becoming possible. One such field is model rocketry. As a hobby, it has been around for decades, dating back all the way to the 1950s. Though actively controlled model rockets have just recently started appearing.

While there are publications on the topic of modeling the control system of model rockets, there is little work published about a selection of the hardware for control units, their design and software implementaion.

This work focuses on selecting the most appropriate microcontroller and peripherals for this control unit and on implementing the necessary software. The selected microcontroller will replace the Atmega328 microcontroller, which is commonly used on the control unit as a part of an Arduino board. Moreover, the selected sensors will be subjected to an actual flight of a model rocket and data visualization and analysis will be a part of the text.