The test rocket was built at Euro Space Center, Belgium, during a rocket building camp I had the pleasure to help with. The process was pretty much straightforward.

I used a standard Estes BT-55 body tube, with the ability to split in half, thus allowing me to install the module in the upper part. The parachute would stay in the lower part.

For this test, I used a D12-5, and a trashbag parachute. The nose cone is an Estes NC-55. I figured out the stability with OpenRocket, and the fins were designed to allow a stability of around cal 3.0.

The motor mount is made of rolled paper, the spacers are 3D printed.

The actual data logger sits at the top of the rocket: I just need to remove the nose cone to swtich on the module, and I can easily reprogram the module if I need to.

While testing the module inside the rocket, I noticed the accelerometer didn't register the launch impulse on every try! That was quite annoying, and even after installing a few decoupling caps, the problem was still there. After looking for different causes, I figured out that the radio transmitter was at cause: the emission was creating RF interference, causing the accelerometer to spit out stupid values. To fix that, I just modified the script a bit: the radio sends a tone, stops, THEN the accelerometer switches on. I tried it 30 times after that mod, and the accelerometer triggered the recorfding 30 times. Good enough for me!