Rocket Tracker / Telemetry System

A rocket flight computer and ground station telemetry system built on ESP32 with LoRa communication.

📱 Get the iOS app — Ronoth Tracker on the App Store The companion mobile app connects to the ground station and displays live maps and telemetry data on your iPhone.

Overview

This project implements a complete rocket telemetry solution with two main components:

• Vehicle Firmware: Collects GPS, temperature, pressure, and accelerometer data at 26Hz, transmits GPS location via LoRa, logs full sensor data to SD card, and displays system status on OLED
• Ground Station: Receives GPS telemetry over LoRa, displays location on OLED, and provides WiFi web interface for iPhone/mobile Maps integration

Hardware Support

Tracker

Currently supports Heltec LoRa 32 V3 or V4 (ESP32-S3)

• Sensors: GPS module, LSM6DS33 IMU, MPL3115A2 barometer
• Communication: SX1262 LoRa radio (915MHz)
• Display: SSD1306 OLED (128x64)
• Storage: SD card for data logging

Ground Station

Any of the below boards will work. No additional sensors, or GPS are required. There are also a lot of 3D printed case options.

• Heltec WiFi LoRa 32 V3 or V4 (ESP32-S3)
• Wio Tracker L1 E-Ink

Quick Start

Web Flasher (no toolchain required)

Flash prebuilt release firmware straight from the browser at flash.ronoth.com/tracker — pick your board, plug it in over USB, and install. Requires a Web Serial capable browser (Chrome or Edge on desktop) and works for all ESP32-S3 boards. The Wio Tracker L1 E-Ink is nRF52-based; download its .uf2 from the latest release instead (double-tap reset, then drag it onto the USB drive).

Building and Uploading

# Vehicle firmware (transmits GPS, logs all sensors to SD)
pio run -e vehicle -t upload

# Ground station (receives GPS, displays on OLED)
pio run -e ground_station -t upload

# Monitor serial output
pio device monitor -b 115200

Data Formats

LoRa Transmission: GPS:lat,lon,alt,speed,sats,hdop
SD Card Logging: timestamp,lat,lon,alt,speed,sats,hdop,pressure,temp,accelX,accelY,accelZ,gyroX,gyroY,gyroZ

Development

Subsystem Testing

Individual component tests are available in systems/ directory:

pio run -e gps -t upload          # GPS module test
pio run -e imu -t upload          # Accelerometer/gyroscope test  
pio run -e logger -t upload       # Multi-sensor logging test
pio run -e lora -t upload         # LoRa transmitter test
pio run -e radio -t upload        # LoRa receiver test
pio run -e oled -t upload         # OLED display test
pio run -e sd -t upload           # SD card performance test
pio run -e i2c -t upload          # I2C device scanner