Help with altimeter build

Hello CEans!

I am working on making an altimeter with real time monitoring for an RC plane that goes up 150 feet.

As for my background, I have not done much with electronics but I do know a decent amount of programming.

I was looking at this BMP180 Barometric Pressure/Temperature/Altitude Sensor- 5V ready ID: 1603 - $9.95 : Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits but I am not entirely confident on what other parts I require in order to make everything work properly and then integrating it together. I imagine I also need some type of radio and some type of IDE for arduino programming? Also I believe I need a microcontroller with I2C?

I plan on using this to control my plane's motors: CopterControl / CC3D / Atom Hardware Setup — LibrePilot/OpenPilot Wiki 0.1.4 documentation, which has I2C so would that work?

For small distances like 150 feet one may be better off with laser sensors.
Produkt - ASTECH

Interesting project, @David Rubiano !

Yes, if you looking forward for BMP chip then you will need Microcontroller which can read from it via I2C interface.
You can go with this board:- Arduino - ArduinoBoardNano
Here is tutorial on how to use BMP180 chip with Arduino:- Arduino Nano: Barometric Pressure and Temperature BMP180 Sensor with Visuino

Thanks for that information!

What would be the best way to transmit the data to my PC? I've heard it can be possible to use bluetooth or radio, and I haven't quite found an exact tutorial that gives me confidence in implementing it. It would need to be capable of transmitting 150 feet away

David Rubiano

Thanks for that information!

What would be the best way to transmit the data to my PC? I've heard it can be possible to use bluetooth or radio, and I haven't quite found an exact tutorial that gives me confidence in implementing it. It would need to be capable of transmitting 150 feet away

I would say use WiFi for that. ESP8266 can be good choice for you. You have to put one of your PC port in listen mode and connect to that port using TCP/IP.

Harshad Italiya

I would say use WiFi for that. ESP8266 can be good choice for you. You have to put one of your PC port in listen mode and connect to that port using TCP/IP.

I don't think thats an option since I will be flying my plane in an open field, where WiFi probably won't be available

David Rubiano

I don't think thats an option since I will be flying my plane in an open field, where WiFi probably won't be available

I see ! Then you definitely need some RF Transceiver on your RC Plane and same on PC Side which can act as a RF Bridge ideally.