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Christopher Sparrow Engineering Portfolio

Projects Get in touch

Projects

Coming soon

MANTAIn progress

Ground Station Telemetry Receiver

AerospaceNU, project lead, started September 2026

  • Ground station that tracks up to 3 rockets live at once
  • Streams data to a laptop or phone over Bluetooth and logs it to an SD card

REMORAUp next

Antenna Tracker

Solo project, waiting on Manta

  • Antenna tracker that rides on Manta
  • Drives motors that aim a Yagi antenna at the rocket by comparing GPS positions
  • Plugs into Manta's tracker port

In progress

Flight Console Live Tracking

Solo project, waiting on Manta

  • Live 3D view of a rocket during launch
  • Will run on live data from Manta once it's built
  • Currently displays simulated DOGTOOTH PCB data

Open the Flight Console

AVIONICS CIRCUIT BOARD DESIGN SOLO PROJECT

DOGTOOTH

Custom Avionics GPS and Radio PCB

  • Rocket flight tracker
  • Tracks the rocket with GPS and sends its data down over LoRa radio
  • Designed solo, end to end, for the Northeastern University Launch Initiative (NULI), a rocketry team within AerospaceNU
View Project →

EMBEDDED FIRMWARE TEAM PROJECT

Avionics Flight
Computer Firmware

Code I wrote with mentors on my avionics team for Silly Goose, a custom altimeter board built by one of them, Patrick McGuire. It reads the pressure and motion sensors, smooths out the noise, and figures out when the rocket launches, peaks, and lands.

View Project →
TELEMETRY SOFTWARE SOLO PROJECT

Flight Console

A web page I built to replay rocket flights on a map or in a 3D view. It shows each rocket's track, altitude, and speed, and marks liftoff, apogee, and landing as they happen. For now it plays one simulated flight, made by running my GPS and radio board's firmware on a PC.

Open the Flight Console →
The simulated flight in the Flight Console's 3D view, over desert terrain. A gold track climbs straight up from the launch point to apogee at 3,000 m. The rocket is on its way down at 1,750 m above ground, and a dashed line runs to it from the ground station.
Imagery and terrain from Cesium ion

Imagery: Bing Maps, © 2026 Microsoft Corporation, © Mapbox, Earthstar Geographics SIO, © Maxar, © CNES (2026) Distribution Airbus DS.

Terrain: Data available from the U.S. Geological Survey, © CGIAR-CSI, Produced using Copernicus data and information funded by the European Union - EU-DEM layers, Data available from Land Information New Zealand, Data available from data.gov.uk, Data courtesy Geoscience Australia.

Front of the toothpaste dispenser Inside the dispenser, with the electronics showing
MECHANICAL EMBEDDED TEAM PROJECT

Assistive Toothpaste
Dispenser

  • Wall-mounted dispenser that pushes out the right amount of toothpaste with one button press
  • Made for people who have limited dexterity
  • On our team of three, I led the electronics and wrote the MicroPython code for the Raspberry Pi Pico
View Project →

I'm Christopher Sparrow, an electrical engineering student at Northeastern. Most of the work on this site comes from my contributions to AerospaceNU, Northeastern University's rocketry club. I'm on the avionics subteam, which designs the electronics for club projects like air brakes (flaps that slow the rocket down) and our supersonic carbon fiber rocket.

In fall 2025 I worked with mentors on our flight computer's code. Now I'm building two projects on my own. The first is a circuit board built to track the rocket with GPS and radio its position down to the ground. I've already designed and assembled the board, and right now I'm bench testing it. The second is a ground station, a radio board that will pick up the rocket's data during flight and send it over Bluetooth to a laptop or phone.

Dogtooth Systems is named after the dogtooth tuna, and its logo is on circuit boards I've designed and across this site. Some of my deepest passions are freediving and spearfishing, and a lot of spearos have heard stories about the dogtooth being the hardest fish to target. Going after one tests your skill, patience, gear, and how well you know the sport.

I try to bring that same mindset to engineering. With rocket electronics, most of the work happens on the bench long before launch day, and everything has to come together the one time it really matters.

In January 2027 I'm starting a co-op at MIT Lincoln Laboratory in Group 94, Electronics for Contested Space. I'll be working on electronic hardware for space systems.

Christopher Sparrow looking at a circuit board under a microscope
HARDWARE

PCB design

  • KiCad for schematic capture and PCB layout
  • LTspice for circuit simulation
  • Four-layer board stack-ups
  • RF layout, including impedance-controlled traces and antenna keepouts
  • DRC, ERC, and DFM checks before ordering boards
  • Ordering parts, hand soldering, and bench testing my own boards
  • Oscilloscope, digital multimeter, DC power supply, and function generator
FIRMWARE

Embedded systems

  • C and C++ for embedded firmware
  • MicroPython, Python, and MATLAB
  • PlatformIO, the toolchain we use for AerospaceNU firmware
  • Git and Linux
  • Quartus for FPGA design
  • ARM Cortex-M microcontrollers, Raspberry Pi Pico, and Arduino
  • SWD and JTAG for programming and debugging
  • I²C, SPI, and UART serial communication
  • PWM for motor control
  • Sensor drivers, low-pass filtering, and flight-state detection
  • Flight data logging to SPI flash
  • Integrating GPS receivers and LoRa radios into custom boards
MECHANICAL

Mechanical design

  • SolidWorks for parts and assemblies
  • AutoCAD, laser cutting, sheet metal, and enclosure design
  • 3D printing for prototyping

Let's
build
something.

I'm always happy to talk about projects. Email is the fastest way to reach me.

EMAIL
chrisparksparrow@gmail.com
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LINKEDIN
linkedin.com/in/chrispsparrow
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