Dane.Kouttron
Imaging Balloon of Science
| Design and Hardware | Development Pictures | Images From Craft | Images From Ground | Who Built It & Conclusion |
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Creating a near-space imaging vehicle in under 30 hours (aka a beer cooler, that ran linux)
| What? Seeing the curvature of the earth from the eyes of your own machine, is awesome. Myself and a group of friends sought out to build an imaging balloon for cheap, in the course of 1 weekend, and to document our findings for subsequent launches and for the Internet. I wanted to do this, made some phone calls, motivated some folks and did a bunch of leg-work. The results speak for themselves Teaser Images
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| Step | Description | Image / Media |
| 1. Getting Hardware | The hardware for this project is listed below, in the Hardware section. |  |
| 2. Laying Out a Plan | Before
starting
this project our team of folks setup a wiki for developing ideas and
posting links its here: http://skynet.andrewtamoney.com/doku.php |
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| 2.
Organizing Smart Folks |
The
wiki was a
wonderful way to 'get things on paper' so-to-speak. Next a giant train of emails coordinated cars, resources and recipts. we departed for RPI (Troy NY) on a Saturday morning, and returned Sunday Night. the balloon was recovered later that week in VT. |
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| 3. Planning for Disaster | There
are a bunch of 'if this fails we have this' systems on this balloon. The GPS was powered initially by the USB hub power, however in the case that the main battery failed, a 9v cell and regulator stepped in to bang out the morse code for positioning. |
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| 4. Fuel | As a note, if you plan on doing something similar, humans require food to operate. Purchase it in advance. we somehow burned through 4L of mountain dew in the first 12 hours |  |
Hardware:
| Component | Purpose | Cost | Image |
| CPU | X86
Athena board, 4/600mhz cpu. 10W power consumption. more com ports than anyone could ever possibly need. plenty of GPIO and ADC's http://www.diamondsystems.ch/products/athena Gracefully donated from DEKA research. |
free |  |
| CAMERA | craigslist'd older 3mega pixel camera (cannon) | 20 USD | |
| DC-DC Converter | 2 cheap 5v cigarette adapter cell phone charger (12V->5v) paralleled for current capacity > 2A | 20 USD | |
| Maxstream 2.4ghz transciever | 9600
baud modem
used for compressed
photo down-link link (images from cameras were compressed using Gphoto on the x86 cpu, and streamed down the 2.4 ghz link to the tracking vehicle We initially contemplated building rf hardware and determined that the data rate and range required for our application was well outside the range that we were capable of. |
80 USD |  |
| 433mhz
transmitter (radtronix) |
transmitter pumped out slow morse code pattern detailing gps coordinates. morse code was generated by a microchip pic, using some interrupts and a simple lookup table | free from lab | |
| USB HUB | cheap radio shack mini usb hub (had to make it non-self powered) | 18 USD | |
| GPS PUCK | USB GPS purchased from geeks.com 3 years ago. very cheap | 15 USD | |
| PIC 18F series | micro controller used for relaying gps data / converting NMEA to morse | Free from lab | |
| 1980's Weather Balloon | Ebay'd weather balloon | 12 USD | |
| Giant 300cubic ft tank of Helum | Rented
Via Airgas, used MIT ID for Discount. Thanks media lab! (Temp employment @ media lab = discount) |
120 USD |  |
| Super
Basic System Overview: CPU instructs camera to take pictures over usb using gphoto. images stored on camera, and passed over usb to the cpu. CPU compresses images and sends over ppp link (2.4ghz), so low res images could be retrieved in case the vehicle wasnt recovered. GPS is also fed into CPU (via usb) and inserted into the ppp transmission. We connected to the ic on the USB GPS to retrieve serial (3.3v ttl) and used an external micro controller (micochip) to interpret the NMEA, and convert to morse code. Morse code position data was relayed down using a radtronix 433mhz transmitter. Ham radio call sign info was also included in transmission The Microcontroller, camera and cpu were powered by seperate energy storage systems, in case of individual system failure. |
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Continue to Development Pictures (or just click a link below)
| Design and Hardware | Development Pictures | Images From Craft | Images From Ground | Who Built It & Conclusion |
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Dane.Kouttron
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Electrical & Electrical Power
631.978.1650
