Honeywell sells ring-laser gyros and IMU's based on them for not a huge amount of money - about $11,000.00 for a flight-worthy unit rated sufficient for rocketry.

Warren

Honeywell sells ring-laser gyros and IMU's based on them for not a huge amount of money - about $11,000.00 for a flight-worthy unit rated sufficient for rocketry.

Warren

Hey Ill run right down and get one!
Where are they located? 😉

Adrian, I still think you need to add a voice chip and have the "Parrot" speak the altitude. 😉

Yeah, but first you'd have to train it 😉

Actually, Robert deHate (picoalt guy) says he's made one like that. I don't know the details, though.

Yeah, but first you'd have to train it

And put papers under it! I had an African Grey that lived 26+ years. Miss that bird. 😉 You have a great product, and I'll get one next year. Already at the just over $200 mark from friends and vendors at the annual meeting. BTW, my launch control talks... though not well, chip is from a clock... 9-9-8-...3-2-1-OH-OH-OH.

African Greys are amazing. I'm sure you have some great stories.

African Greys are amazing. I'm sure you have some great stories.

We had a cockateal, IT SUCKED.

I've been shipping the Parrots out at a rate of about 3-5 per week, and I'm down to the last 6 that are ready to go out the door. 😯 It's looking like I may run out before Christmas, so I'm posting this so that if someone in the club has been planning to get one, he gets his chance before they're gone. I have a few more from the first assembly batch that require various amounts of work to get them ready to sell, and I'm not sure I'm going to have time to prepare any of them before the January meeting. So if you've been planning to order one but just haven't gotten around to it, consider this fair warning.

Looks like I'll need to get going on Parrot batch #2. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to raise the prices for the next batch, since I won't have an introductory deal with my assembly company to help out this time around, and I've been discovering a number of hidden costs along the way that I can't afford to keep ignoring.

In other news (not for distribution outside of the club, if you don't mind), I'm working on a bare-bones, baro-only altimeter that will compete favorably against the Perfectflite Alt15k on price, size, and accuracy. I'll probably call it the Sparrow, and if I can make it work out, I'll try to get it approved for TARC. I'm also planning do a variation of it with a smaller battery and more memory that will be the Hummingbird.

Afraid I'm going to have to pass on the Parrot until after the Christmas season or further on. Grandkids and kids gotta come first right now.

Also, if you're going to do another altimeter - whether baro only or both, the basic list of features I think needs to be:

- ceiling 25K AGL minimum
- Dual deploy with a single battery
- selectable Mach Delay up to 24 seconds
- fit in a 24mm airframe
- serial or USB port to download the flight data (and stream it out the port during flight for telemetry downlink)

In other words, a Perfectflight MAWD competitor. Perfectflight sells the MAWD for $99. Add another $25 for the RS232 cable adapter and a Windows/Mac app to graph the data.

The Parrot has a damn nice set of features - if I were you I'd enhance it to provide full dual deploy, lose the rechargable battery, and add Mach Delay up to 35 seconds and selectable main deployment altitude from 500' to 2500'AGL. Helluva product there.

Warren

Thanks, Warren.

I've also been thinking about a dual deploy altimeter similar to what you're describing, but it's going to have to wait until I get done with the Sparrow and Hummingbird.