TeleStern/doc/intro.inc

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== Introduction and Overview
Welcome to the Altus Metrum community! Our circuits and software reflect
our passion for both hobby rocketry and Free Software. We hope their
capabilities and performance will delight you in every way, but by
releasing all of our hardware and software designs under open licenses,
we also hope to empower you to take as active a role in our collective
future as you wish!
Our goal is to include in this document all of the information required
to successfully configure and use Altus Metrum products. But
documentation is a lot like software in that it can contain "bugs",
and can probably always be improved! If you have questions that
aren't answered in this manual, or just need a little help figuring
things out, we strongly suggest joining the Altus Metrum user email
list, which you can do by visiting
https://lists.gag.com/mailman/listinfo/altusmetrum. There's a lot
of useful information in the mailing list archives!
The first device created for our community was TeleMetrum, a dual
deploy altimeter with fully integrated GPS and radio telemetry
as standard features, and a “companion interface” that will
support optional capabilities in the future. The later versions
of TeleMetrum, v2 and newer, have all of the same features but with
improved sensors and radio to offer increased performance.
Our second device was TeleMini, a dual deploy altimeter with
radio telemetry and radio direction finding. The first version
of this device was only 13mm by 38mm (½ inch by 1½ inches) and
could fit easily in an 18mm air-frame. The latest version, v3.0,
includes a beeper, higher power radio, extended on-board
flight logging and an improved barometric sensor.
TeleMega is our most sophisticated device, including six pyro
channels (four of which are fully programmable), integrated GPS,
integrated gyroscopes for staging/air-start inhibit and high
performance telemetry.
EasyMini is a dual-deploy altimeter with logging and built-in
USB data download.
EasyMega is essentially a TeleMega board with the GPS receiver
and telemetry transmitter removed. It offers the same 6 pyro
channels and integrated gyroscopes for staging/air-start inhibit.
TeleDongle v0.2 was our first ground station, providing a USB to RF
interfaces for communicating with the altimeters. Combined with
your choice of antenna and notebook computer, TeleDongle and our
associated user interface software form a complete ground
station capable of logging and displaying in-flight telemetry,
aiding rocket recovery, then processing and archiving flight
data for analysis and review. The latest version, TeleDongle
v3, has all new electronics with a higher performance radio
for improved range.
For a slightly more portable ground station experience that also
provides direct rocket recovery support, TeleBT offers flight
monitoring and data logging using a Bluetooth™ connection between
the receiver and an Android device that has the AltosDroid
application installed from the Google Play store.
More products will be added to the Altus Metrum family over time, and
we currently envision that this will be a single, comprehensive manual
for the entire product family.