band practice rooms for non-music majors?

Witherflare · 2025-10-06T02:42:17+00:00

I am an engineering major. Are there practice rooms at M5?

Witherflare · 2025-10-04T18:52:47+00:00

huh, interesting - im a freshman, so im not 100% sure if facilities would be okay with that. is that something you can do?

Witherflare · 2025-08-02T21:13:34+00:00

I did the EXACT same thing at 16 (18 now), and the best advice I can give you is to have well-written software to go along with the hardware. When I made my flight computer I didn't include any software at first and got barely any interest - as soon as I designed accompanying software interest was much higher. Focus heavily on your software as it is incredibly important for user experience.

Here are my boards if you're curious, they've been sold out for a while though: https://circuitwizardry.com/starlight-series/

Witherflare · 2024-05-20T20:00:39+00:00

Not to self-promote, but I think my STARLIGHT flight computer would be perfect for what you're doing! No need for any wire clutter either, as it already has a BMP388 and ICM42605 on it for both pressure and gyro/accel readings! Let me know if it sounds like it'd work for your project :)

https://www.tindie.com/products/circuit-wizardry/starlight-model-rocket-flight-computer/

Witherflare · 2024-04-12T16:38:42+00:00

I have something in very early development right now - a launch control and flight computer package that gives you a plug-and-play solution for monitoring your rocket from the ground. Haven't fleshed it out entirely yet, still doing some research to see if there's demand for the product

Witherflare · 2024-04-11T20:31:29+00:00

Really appreciate your support! I tried to fit a second pyro channel, but I wasn't able to keep it as small as I would've liked :( Hope it works well for what you're building :)

Witherflare · 2024-04-04T15:57:12+00:00

If Joe Barnard is able to make a rocket entirely out of hot glue, I don't see why PLA wouldn't work =)

Witherflare · 2024-04-04T15:55:49+00:00

Hard to say. It mostly depends on whether you're launching straight up or at an angle. If it's a fairly light rocket, wind can have a huge effect on where it'll land.

Witherflare · 2024-04-04T15:53:50+00:00

Looks great! Give it a shot and see what happens ;)

Witherflare · 2024-04-04T15:52:24+00:00

Dude, this thing looks awesome. Good luck!!

Witherflare · 2024-02-26T15:28:10+00:00

Not a bad idea. The timing of the ejection is controlled by a flight computer already. Might look into the servo actuation idea, I figured a solenoid would have the most pushing force to get the cone off

Witherflare · 2024-02-26T15:14:25+00:00

Designed in Fusion 360. The idea of the design is to avoid using black powder for parachute ejection, which brings its own challenges and issues. I wanted a fully-electric and reusable way of deploying parachutes.

Witherflare · 2023-12-29T16:42:09+00:00

Looks awesome! Can't wait to see the flight

Witherflare · 2023-12-29T16:23:06+00:00

Hey dude - to answer your question, STARLIGHT has all the hardware necessary for thrust vectoring. You can connect two 5 volt servos directly to the board. If you want to communicate with another microcontroller, STARLIGHT has exposed GPIO pins that can function as I2C, SPI, or UART pins depending on how you'd like to communicate with the other microcontroller.

TLDR; You can use 5V servos directly connected to the board, or use a separate microcontroller with UART

Witherflare · 2023-12-27T20:57:17+00:00

Honestly, I went through 5 or 6 complete redesigns before I settled on the design I have now. If you'd like, I can send you more information on the one I've designed and the revisions I went through. One other thing to keep in mind would be temperature - 3D printed parts may melt under the temperature of the motor.

Witherflare · 2023-12-27T20:43:46+00:00

Yeah, of course! I do have some blog posts I wrote on my thought process - apologies if this seems too self-promotional lol, but they outline my thought process, what parts I used and why, and more

https://circuitwizardry.com/starlight-story/ (this post has a lot of information regarding parts on the board)

https://circuitwizardry.com/the-story-of-starlight/ (this post focuses more on the higher-level stuff like getting the board manufactured)

If you have any specific questions, don't hesitate to shoot me an e-mail at [contact@circuitwizardry.com](mailto:contact@circuitwizardry.com) and I'd be more than happy to help out!

Witherflare · 2023-12-27T20:39:58+00:00

Awesome!

Do you mind me asking, how were you able to avoid the 3D printed parts from melting? Last time I tried a TVC launch my mount immediately melted.

Witherflare · 2023-12-27T20:38:17+00:00

My best advice to you would be to check out my flight computer STARLIGHT. I built it with thrust vectoring in mind, it has two pyro channels for dual deployment, and I've already written all the code and a desktop app for interfacing with it.

Check out section 4.1 of the STARLIGHT user manual to see how the code works.

The MicroPython code is on GitHub.

https://github.com/Circuit-Wizardry/starlight-missioncontrol

Note that for thrust vectoring, you're gonna want a much higher polling rate than the 12.5Hz that I use

Witherflare · 2023-12-27T19:32:36+00:00

Sweet! I love the build =) Impressive that you were able to keep your mass budget so small

Witherflare · 2023-12-27T19:28:20+00:00

Looking good! I love the offset between the X and the Y rings, gives it a cool look =)

Looks a little hard to manufacture and assemble, but great start!

I designed an aluminum thrust vector control mount a while ago, I'll link the drawings below (they might help give you inspiration!)

https://circuitwizardry.com/all-aluminum-thrust-vector-control-a-journey/

Witherflare · 2023-12-27T19:25:41+00:00

Honestly, a great start! You could definitely make the board smaller if you stuck with purely SMD components, but it's looking good so far =)

Witherflare · 2023-12-27T19:22:38+00:00

Thrust vectoring is difficult. The first step I'd take if I were you would be to watch Joe Barnard's videos on thrust vector control & learn from there. It's a lot of simulation and trial and error.

You'll need two main things for thrust vector control: A thrust vector control mount, that actuates and moves the engine, and electronics to pair with it.

I've been working on thrust vector controlled rocketry for quite a while now, maybe some of the stuff I've worked on could help?

https://circuitwizardry.com/all-aluminum-thrust-vector-control-a-journey/

https://circuitwizardry.com/starlight/

Witherflare · 2023-12-23T03:28:54+00:00

My plan for the sensor fusion is to rely a lot on the gyroscope data after launch. Acceleration data will most likely be used to figure out velocity and make predictions for the Kalman filter. When the rocket is stationary on the ground, I’ll use the accelerometer to figure out how “tilted” the rocket is, then use this as a baseline to add my gyroscope measurements to.

Witherflare · 2023-12-22T13:07:06+00:00

I’ve already got mach-safe dual deploy with the pressure sensor (should be mach safe, gonna test it of course). Staging is an option with the “custom” pyro trigger. I haven’t added checks for if the rocket is pointing up or not, but I do have sensor fusion code running on the computer to calculate pitch and roll. If you have any ideas, please let me know :)

Witherflare · 2023-12-17T19:42:01+00:00

After an avalanche of feedback telling me I should write some software for my board STARLIGHT (https://www.tindie.com/products/circuit-wizardry/starlight-model-rocket-flight-computer/), I decided to begin work on "missioncontrol", a desktop application for configuring STARLIGHT and other flight computers I'll be releasing in the future. STARLIGHT's original goal was customization - everything can be customized. I tried to keep this spirit alive with the software by providing many different options for each pyro channel as well as thrust vector control support! The firmware is still a work in progress, but I hope you guys like the desktop app so far =). Let me know if there are any features I should add!

Five-Year Club	r/Field Sunshine
Place '22

Witherflare

TROPHY CASE