The Gideon Mk1 is a free flight computer design and software for an Arduino-based avionics package to be used as a flight computer and data logger. The computer logs data in CSV (comma separated value) format to the SD card automatically, which can be reviewed and charted in a spreadsheet like Excel or OpenOffice or similar, and can easily be imported into other programs for analysis.
The current free design is based on an Adafruit Feather M0 Adalogger with SD card slot, a BMP390 barometric pressure and temperature sensor and a BNO085 IMU, all powered by a LiPo battery. The total parts cost is about $57.
Parts manifest:
Adafruit Feather M0 Adalogger (~20): https://www.adafruit.com/product/2796
Adafruit BMP390L Barometric Pressure and Temperature Sensor (~$11): https://www.adafruit.com/product/4816
Adafruit 9-DOF Orientation IMU Fusion (~$20): https://www.adafruit.com/product/4754
Adafruit Lithium Ion Polymer Battery – 3.7v 100mAh (~$6): https://www.adafruit.com/product/1570
Wiring is simple, using only power and the I2C bus (SCL/SDA).
The code is on GitHub at https://github.com/Asteria-Aerospace/Gideon-Avionics
This flight computer is designed to ride in a custom-designed 3D printed 55mm diameter payload fairing nosecone and has been successfully flown multiple times. The nosecone design, 3d printed parts and other rocket parts and accessories can be bought from our sister website, AsteriaFab.com.
The second generation of Gideon flight computer will add a GPS and LoRa 900MHz realtime telemetry radio, and the third generation will also incorporate a RunCam FPV camera.