Pitot + pixhawk for skydiving airspeed measurements

Pixhawk
1

Hi everyone,

I’m Elia from Italy, I’m a skydiver trying to create an instrument to wear during my activities able to measure my airspeed (not freefall, only canopy performance). Now I’m using a GPS but I can measure the wind component so it is impossible to understand the real performance of my wing. On this page Airspeed Sensors | PX4 User Guide (main) I’ve seen which airspeed sensors could be suitable for the job, my question is:

Can I use a pitot + digital airspeed sensor + pix4 even if they will be used outside their usual range of applications? I’ve seen from Airspeed Calibration | PX4 User Guide (main) that when calibrating the sensor I need to connect the vehicle to QGroundControl but in this case, I don’t have any of those vehicles, do you think I’ll be able to calibrate and use the instrument anyway?

Thank you for any reply

2

Hi! Interesting use case!

I would:

  1. Look at the datasheets of the airspeed sensors to check if they could work at the speed.
  2. Then I’d calibrate it once in QGC and use the calibration data of it afterwards. If I’m not mistaken, the Sensirion SDP3x should be the best choice to avoid having to recalibrate each time.
  3. Take some data, e.g. while driving a car to see how/whether it performs at higher speeds.

Does that make sense?