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CAMERA ROCKET PROJECT (as of 12/10/2006)

My first 2007 project will be a camera rocket project. This will be a 4” rocket with the goal of flying it close to our club waiver (8000’) and snapping some pictures while it’s up there. On board video is a option as well.

Pictures from
Camera Rocket
Here

Camera Selection
For this project I have decided to use a consumer digital camera of reasonable high quality. I have seen many rocket camera projects that kind of skimp on the camera quality, Often using cheap fixed optics where tradeoffs in picture quality was taken to achieve small space and low cost. Maybe they are good enough, we will see.

You can often get great deals on last year’s digital cameras which were state of the art at the time. I went with a Kodak CD43. It is a 4 MP camera with video and sound capability. I got a factory refurbished model on ebay for about 50 bucks (with a 1-year factory warranty).

Payload Design
I decided to integrate the camera and rocket electronics into a single electronics bay which will be 12” long. I used G10 construction held together with #6 hardware. A picture is below.

Between the two left bulkplates are mounted the MARS Altimeter and the soon to be announced MARS Logging Acceleromter. The camera is mounted between the two right bulkplates and mounted in the center bulkplate is the servo that is used to push the shutter button on the camera.

Here is a view from the front. Under the electronics are mounts for two battery power supplies. A 9v feeds the altimeter and accelerometer and a back of 4 AAA feeds the shutter button servo. Conceivably a single battery could drive both but I wanted to keep it separate so that a problem in the servo circuit does not interfere with the recovery electronics.

Here is a closeup of the shutter button servo. It simply pulls down an aluminum rod over the button. A separate board (not shown) operates the servo. The intent is for this board to get a signal from the accelerometer board that the rocket is launched to begin taking pictures.

Here is the board that controls the shutter button servo. The servo is controlled by a 12F629 PIC. The 5pin header is for main power connection and doubles as the programming port. The two pin connector receives a signal from the on-board accelerometer for launch detect, apogee detect or any other signal that may be useful in controlling the shutter servo. The 3pin header is for the servo connection.

MORE TO COME SHORTLY