T-minus 10
Mika
Moenchmeier
I build things end to end: CAD, electronics, code, and the test rig to prove it. Scroll, and my rocket will show you around.
Stop 01 · About
About
I’m at home in both New Zealand and Germany, and I’ve always liked working out how things work and then building my own. When I’m not building something I’m usually at the beach: I’ve been a volunteer surf lifeguard for years, and I race inflatable rescue boats.
Since finishing school in 2025 I’ve been travelling through Asia and Europe, working and volunteering along the way. At school I played first-team hockey, sat on the school board as student representative, and received my school’s Young Achievers Award.
Stop 02 · Year 13 project, 2025
Self-landing model rocket
A model rocket that steers its own thrust to land upright: a two-axis gimballed motor, a Teensy flight computer and live radio telemetry, designed, built and ground-tested.
Read the project write-up (PDF)Point the motor’s thrust while it fires, and the rocket can keep itself upright and land instead of falling. I designed and built it as my final-year school project in 2025, tested it on the ground, and it was graded Excellence. Visiting Rocket Lab in Auckland along the way didn’t hurt.
Stop 03 · Still running
Home server
A small server at home that runs my smart home and files my paperwork automatically.
Home Assistant runs the smart home and Nextcloud is my own cloud storage, so my files stay on hardware I control. The part I’m proudest of is the document pipeline: a letter gets scanned, Paperless-ngx reads it, an AI step tags and names it, and it lands in the right folder without me touching it.
Stop 04 · In development
CleanSwap
An iPhone app that reads the ingredients on shampoo, sunscreen and the like, and tells you what’s actually in there.
Visit cleanswap.mikamoenchmeier.comPoint your phone at a product’s ingredient label, and CleanSwap checks every ingredient against clear rules, explains what each one does, and suggests better swaps that fit your own skin and hair profile. The landing page is live and the iPhone app is being built now.
Touchdown · Germany
Get in touch
Working on something interesting, or just want to talk rockets? I’d like to hear from you.