Homemade Rocket Altimeter

A simple altimeter that uses a BMP388 to tell how high your rocket goes and logs all the data to a micro SD card.

BMP388

https://www.adafruit.com/product/3966

Micro SD card slot

https://www.adafruit.com/product/254

Arduino Nano 33 iot

https://store-usa.arduino.cc/products/arduino-nano-33-iot?selectedStore=us

This altimeter is fairly simple. Wire up the BMP 388 and Micro SD card slot on a breadboard to the Arduino nano according the wiring diagrams. Connect the CS pin on the Micro SD card slot to D4 instead of D10.

On the sd card slot you can connect it to either 3V or 5V

If you want to connect a battery attach the positive terminal to VIN and the negative terminal to GND on the Arduino.

The next thing to do is to open the Article Altimeter Arduino sketch attached to this project. Upload the sketch to the Arduino and connect an SD card. You should see a blinking red light on the Micro SD card slot which shows that it is logging data.

Take a look at the data on the SD card and you should see a column that records pressure, altitude above sea level, and altitude above ground level, the latter of which is the height of your rocket.

Although using a breadboard is a good way to mount everything, designing a PCB is a more robust solution.

Here is a video of the altimeter in action.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6OpP__CWpY&t=1s

Thanks for reading, if you have any questions email me at diyaerospace@gmail.com