Low cost ground test equipment for atmospheric rocket flights using embedded systems

A low cost ground test system was designed with embedded systems at the core. Remote ignition of the solid rocket motor was implemented via a short message service (SMS) controlled switch. A microcontroller circuit was included to abort activation and a load-cell interfaced with a data acquisition system was used to record thrust generated by the thrust chamber of a solid rocket motor. The approach to obtaining thrust measurements is discussed and results are presented. The maximum thrust measured from the experiment was 1970.5N and the system has the capability to measure thrust values up to 5000N.