The AVA Flight Computer

Dude this whole video is ART. I don't even fly rockets, but the board is so pretty I want one just to frame it on the wall, but wouldn't waste one like that. Better to leave them for people making cool rockets. This is awesome, great work

10 years later: "How i landed a model rocket on Mars."

“There’s a nonzero amount of aesthetics to be considered” Spoken like a true engineer.

The fact you've taught yourself all of this is absolutely remarkable. Big kudos.

so you're telling me the missile just got better at knowing where it is and isn't?

I love how this guy just graduated music school then said, fuck it, I wanna build rockets. And here we are. Awesome.

Love the design! Your video stood out to me because I happen to have been one of the inventors of the NASA AVA (Affordable Vehicle Avionics) computer.

"I'm sure there's someone already in the comments angry with something I did." Oh man, I'm an engineer and currently doing my Ph.D. in computer science, and I couldn't even try to criticize the work you do. That is a LOT of work in creating your own board. Communication patterns, I/O, electronics, hardcore programming... your work is admirable. Wish I had resources here to start learning how to fabricate my stuff like you do. Keep on the hard work.

As someone who has worked on drones, its funny to see you working on a similar path that drone control followed. Started with basic PIDs and slowly got better with full state constol, FOC motor control, fancy filters, better and faster protocols ect.

That build/reflow montage in the beginning is just pure eyecandy. Uuuugh so smooth

As an student finishing his degree on engineering, I congratule you. You are one of those guys who get things done instead of just talking. I've learned a lot of concepts from you. Dont care about the critics, they are probably from the ones who does not do the things you do. Jist keep it going! Greetings from Paraguay!

So I don’t know how I stumbled on your channel, but I’ve stuck around a little to see your embedded design. I’m an aerospace engineer and used to work on engine controllers and think it’s awesome you’ve integrated your own processors and sensors. It’s probably not necessary for your requirements but I think the next “steps” for your design would be to create an enclosure for the PCB. This gives you an opportunity to tackle more environmental conditions like shock/vibe, sand/dust, flammability, temp cycling etc like what aero industry does with airborne hardware via DO-160G. Use connectors instead of terminal blocks to decouple your avionics from the main rocket system and allow you to potentially hermetically seal your enclosure (which is the easiest way to tackle many of the environmental conditions, especially full humidity!) This will also evolve the design of the rest of your electrical system as it will likely require you to make a wire harness to consolidate the signals into a single or couple connectors. Anyways I’m sure none of this is necessary but I appreciate you sharing your lessons learned and in the spirit of community contribute mine to you or who ever reads this. I hope you make a video on how you modeled your system for the kalman filter predictions and how you handled the continual accl. drift. I think that would be a very significant contribution to YouTube.

This is some really high quality video .... Big up man!

The BEST video I’ve seen all year! I really enjoy your logic and engineering perspective. Good on ya for hand making that board and amazingly high quality video presentation.

The thing about the ardunio platform is... the forums are massive, a random person has probably already had a similar error, cant say that about some other microcontrollers

As a model rocket enthusiast, I absolutely love this channel and seeing the depth that it goes into. You’re doing great work and inspiring many of us to dig deeper into the hobby.

Perfect timing! Just released my Teensy-based flight controller for electric VTOLs too :)

Finally putting that music degree to use in that intro I see. Nice.

Really, REALLY good video on your board, and wow, what an incredible amount of work that has gone into it's development. You captured highlights, lowlights and general commentary, all with a good sense of humour. Nicely done!

Simply amazing! It is so great to follow your journey and to see the progress in your engineering!