I tried my hand at making a pcb for a project in high power rocketry but I gave up in frustration. Maybe I’ll try again and see if claudecode can help me get over the hump.
haha not really, so in larger model rockets they go so high that you use two parachutes. The first is deployed at apogee but it's very small so the rocket descends fast and doesn't float (miles in some cases) away, the second is larger and deployed at a pre-set altitude to slow the rocket enough to hit the ground without causing damage to itself or whatever it lands on. To do this you have an onboard altimeter and small blackpowder charges that are used to "pop" out the parachutes.
The altimeters are available OTC but i wanted to use my pi-zero and an IMU with a barometer. What I was designing was an i2c pyro board that could ignite up to 4 e-matches that sets off the blackpowder charges.