Advanced Electronic Devices' R-DAS Unit

The unit is configured Windows software, allowing control of either a G-switch and/or breaking wire arming, smart recovery (integrating accelerometer, barometric main parachute) and/or timed recovery, barometric altitude for main chute release, extra data-acquisition channels, and sampling rate. It has a rather large amount of data storage to allow ambient pressure and acceleration to be sampled 250 times per second for more than 6 minutes. At lower sampling rates the sampling time is proportionally longer.

The large RAM memory of R-DAS is continuously updated with the last 10 seconds of pre-flight data. After lift-off the unit starts storing the data in EEPROM, starting with the last 10 seconds before lift-off. In this manner, pre-flight data is also available, e.g. for offset calibration, or drift verification. Six analog input channels are available through a 16-pin boxed header for your own experiments. This connector also provides your experimental board with a 9V power supply. Four digital inputs/outputs allow you to start your experiment at a pre-programmed time, switch on a recovery transmitter, or read the status from a a digital indicator.