I spent some one on one time getting to know MS Excel’s VLOOKUP function in order to merge the Arduino temperature data points with the APRS altitude and speed data and then created an interactive graph with the results using Google Docs – pretty interesting stuff:
Author Archive for Outside Open
After being transferred between multiple FAA folks and someone in “Military” we have finalized the official launch details for tomorrow!
Launch party will meet at my house at 6 AM and drive up the 33 past Ojai for the launch at 8:30 AM.
Join us in person or track the payload in real-time here…
Thanks to Gabe and Color Services for the awesome recovery notice 🙂
The Byonics Micro-Trak arrived in the mail today so I set it up and took it for a test drive 🙂
The Micro-Track reads the location information from a tiny attached GPS and transmits it via ham radio and then magic happens and the data shows up on the Internet.
During the flight, HAPPy will tweet it’s location, speed and altitude every 5 minutes so that you can follow along 🙂
After the payload lands, we will (hopefully) find it using this APRS data.
A big thanks to Lesson Planet for sponsoring this critical component of the project!
We will launch the balloon from Morro Bay early Saturday morning. According to the CUSF Landing Predictor and UWYO’s balloon trajectory site, the payload will land somewhere near Paso Robles.
If you are interested in joining the launch or recovery efforts, let us know so that we can meet up.
We will be posting real-time tracking info closer to the launch date that will show the location of the capsule throughout the flight…
most likely
The launch is getting close! Geoff arrives in Santa Barbara on Thursday and we’ll spend a sleepless 2 days installing the APRS radio/GPS module, Arduino board with sensors, CHDK camera and batteries into the styrofoam capsule for Saturday’s launch!
We are still looking for a couple of sponsors, if you are so inclined, head over to the sponsors page to see if anything catches your fancy 🙂
Here is a photo of the Arduino with SD card (for logging) connected to a Chronodot clock and temperature sensors:
The HAPPY Capsule is back on track for a flight to near space – the launch has been scheduled for August 13th at 6:30 AM!
Launch site to be finalized – we are deciding between Santa Barbara and Morro Bay and will choose depending on the jet streams and the projected landing location…
Geoff was recently featured in a news segment on KSDK a St. Louis News channel…
Yesterday Geoff was prevented from getting on the plane to Santa Barbara due to his unfortunate affiliation with a dangerous and shady underground group known as the “Under 14s”.
Geoff was returning on United Airlines which allows travelers under 14 to fly, but the trip to SB was on a different (evil?) airline which refused to let him on the plane! 🙁
But never fear folks, we plan to get this dirigible off the ground and will re-schedule the launch for this summer – we’ll keep you posted!
All is not lost! The extra time will allow us to add some new features to the payload and refine some of our communications systems.