ParaDoc — sensor hardware and signal processing demonstrator for paramotors
Own sensor hardware: working EGT monitoring and alarm, multi-sensor logging on every flight, and acoustic and vibration diagnostics under development.
A pre-order campaign ran until 31 August 2026 and did not reach its goal of 500 paid registrations. No deposits were paid, so there was nothing to refund. ParaDoc continues as a development platform. Archived campaign terms
One prototype, built and flown by me
There is one ParaDoc unit: the prototype I designed, built and fly on my own paramotor. Everything on this page refers to that unit.
- Type-K thermocouple on the exhaust: exhaust gas temperature (EGT) every 2 s
- Two microphone channels, sampled at 1 kHz and 48 kHz
- Accelerometer, barometric pressure and GPS
- Battery monitoring
- Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) link to the phone
All channels are logged on every flight. The finished function is EGT measurement with the EGT alarm; the diagnostics built on the other channels are under development.
What works in flight today
Logging on every flight
All channels, from one sample every 2 s (EGT) up to 48 kHz (sound), are logged synchronised on every flight.
Live EGT
EGT every 2 s over Bluetooth Low Energy, live in an Android app and as a sensor in XCTrack, the flight-computer app.
Alarm with the phone in a pocket
A loud tone and vibration when EGT crosses the threshold, noticeable with the phone in a jacket pocket.
No wiring into the engine electrics
Designed for 2- and 4-stroke engines. So far it has flown only on my paramotor.
Acoustic and vibration diagnostics (under development)
These analyses already run on the logged data, but they are not reliable enough yet and remain under development.
- Knock and misfire index — from the impulsiveness (kurtosis) of the high-frequency microphone signal.
- Mixture indicator — from the ratio of the second to the first exhaust harmonic (h2/h1).
- Gear-mesh sideband index — from the sidebands around the gear-mesh tone.
- Bearing trend — from the broadband noise floor over successive flights.
- Propeller imbalance — from the vibration at shaft frequency relative to the blade-passing frequency.
- Pipe resonance — from the exhaust harmonics over engine RPM.
- Acoustic RPM tracking — from the harmonics in the microphone and accelerometer spectra, without a hall sensor.
This is R&D. None of the diagnostics are guaranteed or for sale.
What this demonstrates
- Designing, building and flying my own sensor hardware
- Logging channels with very different sample rates on every flight
- A finished EGT measurement and alarm chain: sensor, Bluetooth, Android app and XCTrack
- Acoustic and vibration diagnostics under development
It is the same toolchain I apply to flight-test instrumentation for wing developers. Flight-test sensing and data analysis →
Built and flown by Rafał, paramotor pilot and control engineer.
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