Dave Akerman has a blog devoted to all of his high altitude ballooning projects. Here’s a TARDIS themed “balloon” incorporating a Raspbery Pi! via Daveakerman.com
For my fourth Raspberry PI weather balloon flight I wanted to pack as much into the flight as I could, making full use of what the Pi has to offer:
- 3G link for video and backup telemetry
- Send telemetry over 3G from the launch site
- A live video stream from payload itself, with telemetry overlay, before and for the first few seconds of launch site, over 3G
- Radio telemetry and SSDV images as usual
- Transmit larger photos than before, using twice the transmission speed
- Switch to taking and sending even larger photos when above 30km
- Take full-size images for storage on the SD card
- 3G to automatically reconnect on landing
- Send the landing position over 3G
- Live video stream from the landing site (hopefully in the middle of an empty field)
- Upload all images to a web server by ftp after landing
That’s quite a lot more than before, and with all the overall control software written the day before launch I wouldn’t have been at all surprised to see things go wrong! In the event, the only part that failed was the ftp upload (the very last thing I added).
With more electronics than usual to pack inside the payload, what better choice than a TARDIS? Sadly I must have missed my university class on transdimensional engineering, so I had to build a fairly large TARDIS to fit everything inside. Actually the real reason for choosing the TARDIS over say an Apollo Command Module (that’s for next time) was that it’s easy to make from flat sheets of extruded polystyrene!
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