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Custom Avionics Bay

The purpose of this Avionics bay is to log altitude, temperature, ascent and descent rate, and the time while a weather balloon ascends to the upper atmosphere. All of this is mounted on a custom PCB board and encased in a 3D printed box.

This custom avionics bay was inspired by Aaron Price.

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  • The Arduino Uno is a microcontroller and the brains of the avionics bay. It holds the programming and tells the GPS unit and temperature sensor when to log data.

  • The GPS unit used in this build is a pico breakout board with an integrated GPS unit. This provides all of the data that is processed by the Arduino Uno then recorded by the SD Reader.

  • The temperature sensor used is a TMP36. It is able to operate in a large range of temperatures and is more than accurate for this application.

  • The data recorder used in the bay is made by SparkFun and is an opensource micro SD data logger. The board is able to hold up to a 32 GB micro SD card.

  • The PCB used is custom made by PCBWay. This allowed for the components to be attached securely and made soldering less troublesome.

  • In addition, two 1k Ω resistors, one red LED, a micro toggle switch, and a 9V battery connector was used.