Can anyone interpret this data?

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

Rockets 2013

<div><div class="WordSection1">
<p class="MsoNormal">Rockets 2013 event in Fredericksburg, Texas streaming live right now&hellip;..liable to see some flights with your hardware aboard.<p></p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><p>&nbsp;</p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">http://www.ustream.tv/channel/rockets-2013<p></p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><p>&nbsp;</p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">University High School had 2 transonic attempts yesterday with the Telemetrum on board&hellip;.unfortunately for all hardware&hellip;catastrophic failure.&nbsp; But the students had very astute observations and suggestions for the next build.&nbsp; Always learning&hellip;.<p></p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><p>&nbsp;</p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Dennis Oubre<p></p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Rockets and Robots Instructor<p></p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Waco, Texas<p></p></p>
</div></div>

Unable to Connect over wireless

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

Two sites for Map list

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

AltusUI won't run on Mac OS X 10.8.3

<div>
<p>Hi,</p>
<div><br></div>
<div>I just downloaded the zip file, extracted it. But when I click on it, I get the message:</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>"AltisUI" is damaged and can't be opened. You should move it to the Trash.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Any ideas? I examined the package contents and I see the various Jars etc inside.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Cheers,</div>
<div>&nbsp;Winton</div>
</div>

MegaMetrum renamed TeleMega

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

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

GPS "issue" resolved

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

Soliciting GPS Troubleshooting Tios

<div><div>
<div>&nbsp;In preparation for the NASA SLI launch this Saturday, I had the team turn on their TeleMetrum to simulate the up to 1 hour hold time on the pad. &nbsp;It has been months since the altimeter has been even turned on. &nbsp;In general, we could not get any GpS satellites (0). &nbsp;We left the unit on for the hour and the monitor indicated 3 sats had been found, but no lock (none expected, of course). &nbsp;We took the altimeter for a walk around the neighborhood in the hopes of avoiding shadowing, but with no improvement. We will try again today in case the local ionosphere LOS was particularly strange yesterday, but that is really grasping at straws. &nbsp;Can someone point us in the right direction t
 o troubleshoot the problem?</div>
<div>Dan and the FCHS SLI Team</div>
<div>Somewhere in the saddle on the way to AL</div>
</div></div>

Removing a LiPo Protection Board

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

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

Antenna in a small AV bay?

<div>
<p>Hi,</p>
<div><br></div>
<div>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.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>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?</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Has anyone flown with it dangling outside through a static pressure port?&nbsp;</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>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?&nbsp;</div>
<div>
<br>
</div>
<div>Has anyone gotten a good solution for this?</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Cheers,</div>
<div>&nbsp; Winton</div>
<div>&nbsp;</div>
</div>

Can you help me troubleshoot a Telemetrum/Windows connectivity problem

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.