Club RockÉTS Avionics bay real-time telemetry system

The team

RockÉTS is a rocketry science club at École de Technologie Supérieure. The club has more than 40 students from all engineering branches that are passionate about space and science. RockÉTS's mission is to share our knowledge, as well as our motivation to everyone around us. To make this happen, we participate in several events and gatherings for all different age and interest groups.

More importantly, we represent ÉTS at the annual Spaceport America Cup competition. This competition takes place in Las Cruces, New Mexico, in the beginning of June. During this event, we share and celebrate the work done throughout the year with other rocketry clubs from around the world and anyone who are interested in seeing an aerospace show. Finally, RockÉTS is proud to contribute to the development of the future aerospace industry. We seek to push our limits and continue our journey with advancements with the help from our partners.

The Project

RockÉTS has always been a leader in avionics systems and this year we plan to keep improving our concepts and develop better systems. Our Avionics bay, nicknamed Anirniq meaning breath of life in Inuktitut, is fully modular and consists of up to 7 modules, currently 5, and a back-plane which enables a flexible configuration that can be upgraded. The whole system is assembled with a 3D printed housing to allow it to be easily placed in a rocket.

Our circuit boards

Backplane

This board is the backbone of our entire system and acts as a communication and power bus between all of our modules and is the reception board for each of our modular boards that follow our proprietary form factor. This board also has a party mode which will illuminate RGBs after a successful flight as shown above.

Acquisition

Data acquisition is crucial to a successful rocket launch. This board uses an Xsens MTi-7 inertial measurement unit which uses advanced sensor fusion algorithms to synchronize the inputs from the module’s on-board accelerometer, gyroscope and magnetometer with the data from an external GNSS receiver and/or barometer. The raw sensor signals are combined, and processed at a high data rate, to produce a real-time data stream with the device’s 3D position, velocity and orientation.

Arming

The arming board allows us to activate the avionics telemetry system, ejection charges, and COTS altimeter from a distance when the rocket is on the launch pad using a bluetooth Android device. This is an added security feature that is very important to allow us to safety activate and launch our rocket.

Communication

Onboard telemetry is great, but being able to see the rocket information and trajectory in real time from the ground is paramount to success in a high octane competition. This board connects to an external RFD900x radio transceiver module which relays the data stream of information to our ground station team.

Mission

The mission board is critical to the flight and controls all of the staging and separation charges found in our rocket. This board can be modified from project to project depending on the mission of the rocket and the different charges or payloads which may be present that year.

PSU

The PSU board is extremely important since it is the power source for all of the other modular boards in the system. This board converts our battery pack voltage of 7.4v into nominal 5v and 3.3v channels that are then used to power everything else.