I convinced my son’s Scouting America Troop (formerly "Boy Scouts of America") to do a model rocket telemetry project. The goal is to find the SMALLEST form factor of little chips and sensors that we can mount to a cardboard-tube Estes model rocket.
- Arduino board (the brains)
- Cellular radio (so we can receive onboard data near-real-time before, during, and after the launch)
- GPS (so we can find it when the wind carries it away -- and also see how high it goes)
- 64g or higher accelerometer (I’ve read 32g accelerometers get pegged during launch)
- Battery mount (hopefully it can run on 1 or 2 button cells)
Optional sensors:
- ambient pressure
- ambient temperature
- ambient humidity
- ambient air quality
Waveshare has a combo ESP32, Cellular, GPS, Wi-Fi, and Camera unit for $48 (their website) $60 (Amazon)
Accelerometer:
- Sparkfun's highest accelerometer is limited to 64g for $22
- Adafruit's highest accelerometer goes to 200g for $25
Ambient Pressure, Temperature, Humidity, and Air Quality:
- Sparkfun has a breakout combining everything for $30
- Adafruit has a breakout combining everything for $20
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Archiving just in case I need a fallback:
LTE sensors:
- Adafruit has the Sony Spresense cellular daughter board for $99
- But this requires also purchasing the Sony Spresence main board for $65
- Sparkfun has a Digi XBee Low Power LTE for $75 (yikes!)
GPS:
- Sparkfun has a GPS receiver for $20...but that means I need to dedicate RX and TX pins on the Ardiuno chip. They have a GPS breakout for $43.
- Adafruit has a GPS feather for $25