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Permalink Reply by Alec on June 29, 2008 at 3:19am

There are some around, but they're stupidly expensive. An open-source barometric altitude/airspeed computer wouldn't be too hard:
MEMS pressure sensor -> amp -> ADC -> uC -> UART/SPI/I2C
All the uC has to do is filtering and conversion to altitude and airspeed, an attiny 45 or something could do that.

Might get over my laziness one day...

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Permalink Reply by Chris Anderson on June 29, 2008 at 8:29am

The Sparkfun board is based on I2C. But I agree that serial is easier to work with, so an open source board would be a cool idea.

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Permalink Reply by Achal Agrawal on June 30, 2008 at 3:39am

Thanks guys for showing your interest. There are two sensors which may fit our application, the freescale MPX series pressure sensors and the VTI's SCP1000. In my opinion SCP1000 is a better choice than MPX. The reason for this is that the MPX series are just pressure sensor which require low pass filter and ADC, whereas the SCP1000 is a package containing a sensor, filtering, ADC and a microcontroller for almost similar pricing($20 at digikey). Below I am giving links to information regarding SCP1000 pressure sensor.

SCP1000 Datasheet
Test carrier PCB datasheet
Application note describing use as altimeter
SCP1000 sensor Digikey Part no: 551-1046-1-ND
PCB with soldered SCP1000 sensor: 551-1042-ND

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Permalink Reply by Keith on July 5, 2008 at 12:20pm

Achal,
The SCP1000 looks like an awesome sensor! Thanks for the information about it! Do you know if there is a similar sensor that would be used for pitot tubes? Such with dual inputs that have connections for tubes?
Thanks!

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Permalink Reply by Chris Anderson on July 5, 2008 at 12:37pm

Here's one.

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Permalink Reply by Keith on July 5, 2008 at 1:00pm

Thanks Chris, but what I meant to say was a sensor with a built in ADC and uC, so that I could it just be hooked up though I2C.

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Permalink Reply by Morli on March 4, 2010 at 8:30am

that would be fantastic Arthur. pls do let us know more info and details of the project.

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