As some of you may know, I finally finished the first production run of Parrot altimeters. I have about 20 of them ready to go now, and about 12 more that I'll calibrate in another batch when the first batch is gone. One of the features I added in the final version is the capability for the Parrot to switch current to a single deployment charge. I've been playing around with using a single, tiny LiPo battery like the one I use in the Parrot to light Estes ignitors, and they seem to work great for that, as long as it's a separate battery from the one powering the altimeter.

I've also been emailing with Greg Clark, who makes the BeeLine transmitters, about coming up with a revised BeeLine board layout that could be even smaller than the BeeLines are now, so that the transmitter could fit into an 18mm tube side-by-side with a Parrot. So there is an opportunity, here, to make Greg's new board do double duty as a power source for a deployment charge controlled by a Parrot, with a built-in arming switch. If the microcontroller for the transmitter winks out during the pyro firing, no harm done, it will just boot up and start sending out the user's HAM call sign, so you'll be able to tell that an apogee charge fired. The combination of a Parrot with its battery, and the BeeLine with its transmitter/pyro battery should come in around 13-15 grams. For comparison, a 9V battery is about 44 grams. In order to make the board redesign worthwhile to Greg, he needs to know he can sell at least three transmitters with the new layout.

At the moment I'm not up for sinking much more money into rocketry electronics, but I'm willing to work with Greg to make this happen if there is interest, and I'd like one or two of these myself. Anybody else think a 13-gram, single-deploy transmitter/altimeter capable of firing ignitors is a good idea?