KG5AGP's First HAB (High Altitude Ballooning) Experiment!!!
Ok...So...I have ALWAYS been excited about weather! I always dreamed of being a StormChaser, but unfortunately my wife will NOT allow me to do that... :-( So......I joined ARES and SKYWARN...It helps a little...lol... And now that I have been doing research, I now about the joys of HAB! I have been doing a LOT of research about this and am working on designing and building a weather-balloon payload that will contain an arduino being used as an APRS radio. If I have everything right, it should record the normal lat, lon, alt, speed, direction as well as the external temperature and the internal temperature of the payload. I am also doing research on ATV (Amateur Television). I am hoping to be able to add a secondary payload that will be ATV. Shouldn't be too hard, but not exactly a cheap way to go. I have been trying to find a way to do so with an arduino or raspberry pi, but unfortunately I have found ZERO applications that would work for me. I will have other cameras running taking pictures and video connected to the arduino, but would be AWESOME to have a live stream that folks here on the ground! But I am working on the details of everything and hope to be able to launch it within the coming months.
Want to help me make my experiment a reality?!
Feel free to donate to my cause!!! ----------> |
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HAB001 UPDATE - 6/24/2015
Well, I am slowly getting the parts needed to complete my APRS tracker for the Weather Balloon experiment! I am building a TrackUino APRS tracker. Thanks to generous donations from the members of the CenturyLink Employees' Amateur Radio Club I am getting close to completion. I was able to order a few parts (pic1 below) and so far CLEARC has gotten me some of the more pricey parts (pic2 below). All that is left now are the $40+ parts such as the actual transmitter, gps chip, sports cam, and 2x Canon A570IS cameras. Oh and we need the balloon and parachute. That is ALL that remains!!! Hopefully here soon I will have the rest of what is needed and get this HAB in the air! Stay tuned for more updates as I build the board, run tests, and eventually launch this experiment.
Well, I am slowly getting the parts needed to complete my APRS tracker for the Weather Balloon experiment! I am building a TrackUino APRS tracker. Thanks to generous donations from the members of the CenturyLink Employees' Amateur Radio Club I am getting close to completion. I was able to order a few parts (pic1 below) and so far CLEARC has gotten me some of the more pricey parts (pic2 below). All that is left now are the $40+ parts such as the actual transmitter, gps chip, sports cam, and 2x Canon A570IS cameras. Oh and we need the balloon and parachute. That is ALL that remains!!! Hopefully here soon I will have the rest of what is needed and get this HAB in the air! Stay tuned for more updates as I build the board, run tests, and eventually launch this experiment.
To the right you can see a close up of the actual PCB for the APRS tracking shield that I will be using with the balloon. It's called the Trackuino Shield. It's an opensource project for use with an arduino board (pic2 above). I used the OSHPark.com PCB service to make the board. I cant wait to get the rest of the components in and start putting this board together!
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