Their wiki doesn't have many details on the timing circuit - that's exactly what I need. PICAXE might do the job - looks like the sort of controller that a moron like me can code, but will do what we need.

I have a LOT of that foam around - it's awesome.

These crap 3 megapixel cameras will happily record a 15 fps 320 x 240 movie for 2 hrs none stop (just tried it - <200 meg video - 2 hrs 2 mins long). No sound...but I'm tempted to go with two cameras for photos, and one with a WAM for video. It works great.

Doug

Well - my idea of a front-door peep hole lens to get fish-eye for the GMC isn't going to work. On both the old catcam, and the new 3 MP cameras - they're FOV is too large to crop into the round FOV from the lens. So it's a WAM technique that'll have to work.

The normal cameras come apart fairly easily and I was able to hard-solder them to a housing and run them off 2 C cells instead of the two AA's that fit internally. I was also able to strip the flash and it's capacitor off the circuitboard with no ill effect - and I've been able to remove and re-attache the ribbon that drives the LCD with no problems as well. The shutter is actually on a tiny PCB of its own and that will be fine in terms of wiring something up. The trigger circuit that I thought would do the trick may not be up to it - it actually takes a 12v supply which seems excessive.

Current plan for imaging.

• Find a new triggering mechanism
• Wire up cat-cam as it is for C-Cell operation (it will happily do image after image at whatever interval I ask for as long as I want all on it's own...I'm not bothered about getting GMC and the other cameras in sync) and do some life-testing of a 4000 mAh C-cell with it - pointing at trees and clouds (appropriate target)
• Shout at the postal service because I don't have my wide angle mirrors, parachute, radio or half my order of electronic bits and pieces.
• Carve up these new polystyrene gondola's to make them an appropriate size, glue with a hot glue gun and then find some alu tape and possibly further insulation.
• Calibrate GMC and normal cameras. (let's call them FOC - Flight Observation Cameras - FOC A, B, C...from top to bottom) Find their FOV's and figure out a means to mount them. The way the l see it - A can mount in a side wall, C in the floor - but B is more difficult without cutting a lot of polystyrene or putting the camera almost outside.

Gizmo has a thing for Elysium and Chryse... she reached up like a Mearcat and pulled the pin I put in at the V1 landing site

Doug

It's virtually eliminated with the calibrated IMG's. What you're actually suffering is chronic impatience.

I'm not going to let people come here and moan about the quality of what MER is putting on the web - period. The JPG's, the PCTDB, the very rapid release of calibrated products on the PDS. MER is the standard to which other missions should aspire. I strongly believe that the scientists are entitled to have their data for a period of time. Giving us SLIGHTLY degraded quality images in real time is a fundamental paradigm shift that has let us come along for the ride.

The compression doesn't matter one bit - for the purpose for which they are intended. They are more than sufficient for the creation of mosaics and animations. How much of a compromise does that compression do to exquisite work like this
http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/~jcanvin/me...volume_full.jpg
or this
http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/~jcanvin/me...ientes_full.jpg

None. If you dragged up an IMG version and the rough JPG version of the same mosaic - flicking between the two with the contrast enhanced...you might be able to tell - but why would you do that - their purpose is served as they are - there is no argument whatsoever to suggest that the quality of the JPG's needs improving. To claim that it does is simply impatience and nothing more. If you want to moan about outreach - there is no shortage of missions for which there is a justifiable reason to moan...but to moan about the quality of MER stuff is fundamentally wrong - and it will NOT happen here.

Doug

Previously someone asked about the numbers of planets in the line up. Until someone recalls the two Pioneer spacecraft and etches out Pluto on their plaques (for that is where they, and the normal logo come from) then it will remain as it is

Dou

Got my three very very cheap cameras and the polystyrene enclosures ( perhaps a bit big - but even if I chop a chunk out of them and glue it back up it'll be a better job than a DIY effort ). Bloody postal strikes mean lots of other cool bits won't be arriving for a while.

Doug

http://pds-imaging.jpl.nasa.gov/data/mer1-...r1po_0xxx/data/

1080 sols worth to play with. That should keep you busy.

I can not believe people are saying they want more than they already get. We get pictures, from Mars, literally HOURS old. These images are good enough for many people to make brilliant mosaics. A few months later - fully calibrated products are available with every iota of accompanying data that you could possibly imagine. And people are asking for more? I find that dissapointing to be honest.

Doug

Someone needs to update the Wiki page about Atlas V's because it doesn't have an LEO capacity figure for the 401?

Reading some Delta II manifest lists - this sounds like it was pulled from the D2 manifest and moved to the Atlas V. Even the 401 will be an overperformance unless the design has bloated by a factor of 2 - is a secondary payload going to ride as well?

This might have been the last D2 launch - so it seems the end for that vehicle is coming sooner that we might have thought.

Doug

That's in the filename already.


Doug

Will it work in the UK do you think? Quad/Tri band is the requirement I think. I can buy a pay-as-you-go sim card over here and drop it in.

He (or his researchers) must read Phils great blog at BadAstronomy.com - because a while back Steve popped a 'we never went to the moon' throw-away joke into his show and Phil called him out on it....so Steve's repented

Doug

My 2 pence in reply - you're SERIOUSLY over analyising it by about 20 orders of magnitude.

The criteria are quite simple.
1) Is derived from the default
2) Doesn't look like complete crap. (A bit like crap is fine)

Here is the exact thought process that went on to come to the new logo

• Right..that's the upgrade for Invision 2.3 done. Oh - a new default forum skin.
• That's nice - a bit more 'sensible' that the light blue colours. I'll have to do what I did last time and make a UMSF banner derived from the Invision banner.
• Oh - October 4th isn't far away - I'll save it till then and put Sputnik in instead of the logo for a while.
• Oh crap - it's the 4th already....and I'm on a train...let's have a think about this Sputniks round.....0 is round..... 5=0 That'll work.
• Lunch time at work .... 'Josh - what do you think of this?' 'Nice!' 'I thought so as well - now what the hell is CSS again?'

Finished. If you're trying to invoke some sort of deep rooted subversive commentary on the status of exploration of space...you SERIOUSLY need to lighten up. I am not, for instance, about to look at the extension lead I'm using and go :

'hmm - a red led on it - suggestive of 'stop' and 'evil' - infering the suggestion that using too much electricity is a bad thing that contributes detrimentally to the state of our climate and counters my responsibility as a member of the global commuinty to be as low impact as I can and furthermore, by buying the cheapest extension lead I could find, I am funding the evil capitalist exploitation of low wage far eastern factory workers that once more, is damning of my efforts to be a globally social and environmentally responsible human...'

...no - it's just an LED - like that's just a logo, made in the laziest way possible.

The basic premise of always having the default skin with a tweaked banner is that as I'm not a code monkey ( as I've said about 1.6x10^58 times before) - I do know how to add skins to the forum, but I occasionally need the Invision tech support guys help . So I want to keep the forum as 'default' as possible to make the ammount of effort involved in maintaining it as minimal as possible.

If someone asked me what I thought the logo looked like I'd go 'Quite nice, simple, clean, a bit corporate perhaps, but nothing wrong with a bit of professionalism'

The theme's staying. If you want to use the old one - the option is there at the bottom left of every single page for you to select which one you want to use - but the old theme is designed around Invision 2.1 - and we're on Invision 2.3 - so compatability issues may exist.

If someone want's to make an Invision 2.3 theme all of their own - I'll happily install it - but the default theme will always be the default as installed with Invision...simply because, as a great guy once said - better is the enemy of good enough.

Doug

Yup - that was the plan all along. The pro-skin is now the forum default - and the older skin remains as a legacy for people who don't like the font of the new skin. What I hope to do is generate a second version of the Pro skin with the font of the old skin, so the option actually just becomes between two fonts.

I don't intend to sell anything with the logo on -it's just a temporary marker and the hassle involved in getting new CafePress stuff sorted far exceeds any returns from sales.

Doug

It all began 50 years ago today. We couldn't let that milestone go un-marked, and hence until Jan 4th ( the 50th anniv of Sputnik 1's re-entry) we will be wearing a celebratory logo.

UMSF logo......changed...and it's staying like this till Jan 4th - the day Sputnik 1 re-entered
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=4667

I saw her getting off a train, which I then got on, here in Leicester yesterday afternoon. I'm sure she said there was going to be the dice sized holographic cube to put music on...and that would have been the early '90s.

WHERE'S MY CUBE!

(and my flying car)

Doug

Yeah - that pretty much sums it up. Subforums get made when they're required - not becaue of some line in the sand or event that takes place. They're made because one topic dominates another forum.

Doug

A 90p thermistor's great...BUT....you need something to read it, log it, and then spit it back out to you on the ground - it becomes a big problem.

There are commercially available stand alone thermometers that log - but they're not cheap. More sense for a first flight might be a simple standalone max/min system like this http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?Module...er&doy=3m10 Something like that will also let me test the GMC sub-ass in the freezer with the lead hanging out.

We wont have a full trace- but we will have a record of the 'worst' conditions both internally and externally. For understanding the 'system' - that's a usefull point.

I want to pack this thing full of as many simple, stand alone, independent systems to get as much as we can, as easily as we can, as cheap as we can - to learn how it all works - so we can say "Yes - we know how to fly a balloon to >80,000 ft and get it back safely"

THEN....we can start thinking about some onboard intelligence that can measure and log...

Lat
Long
Alt
Pressure
Multiple temperatures ( internal battery - internal camera - external - external GMC )
Voltages
Acceleration in 3 axis
Orientation in 3 axis

PLUS - scientific study such as UV etc etc.

But that's a whole realm of 'how the hell....' beyond my knowledge - and I want to figure out how to fly a balloon and get it back before figuring out how to make it a genuine platform for investigation.

Whaddayaknow... it IS round.

And at some point I'm sure the Cassini significant events report will explain what, if anything, has happened. We already get all the images that come down as quickly as they can get them online - and you want verbose flight ops reports in real time on top of that. Be realistic.

Floyd, nprev, Decepticon, Sunspot, Ugordan - you're all acting a bit like spoilt children. How about a little more patience.

Someone else can drown their cameras intentionally - I'm only aiming to do it unintentionally There's a real engineering challenge in 'depth' for the payload protection - far more so than altititude - but the 'transport' would be so much easier ( a line, and some rope) interesting concept though.

It doesn't need a subforum until it starts doing science in a few years. It has ONE thread right now...maybe it'll get another - but a thread on it's own in a subforum would be a tumble-weed like situation. On that basis, the front page of the C & AM subforum would need to be split into 6 subforums which would be a pointless overcomplication.

Doug

Well - I think with these cheap cameras I've got coming - I'll tick the low-cost, wide angle boxes and bolt on a simple timer circuit. I need to establish what, if anything, is happening when the shutter is pressed ( is their current or voltage involved that might feed back from one camera to another etc - and does that even matter if they're all identical anyway )

With multiple cameras, the independent timer circuit is going to be a better bet than relying on the intervalometers of whatever type of camera we have - as I imagine they would drift out of sync with one another Power is still a 'hmm - what to do' issue - because the FM APRS Tx needs a power source as well - although it will happily run of a standalone 9V for a week or more. Amazingly - there are some C and D recharable cells that run to 5000Ahrs and 11000 Ahrs respectively. A pair of those for each camera would give us all the juice we would need (5000Ahrs is twice the capacity of an excellent AA)

I was worried about the cold on the GMC - but going for the most simple possible solution - http://www.bargainboards.co.uk/P/MyCoal-Fo...mers(1252).aspx - would make the problem go away entirely.

Once I have chute, box, cameras, FM APRS Tx, GPS - I can think about the mass budget and figure out how many Whr's we can get into it. If it's looking desperate then in order..things would get culled like this

3rd camera
2nd camera
GMC
IBS
Replace 1st camera with GMC fitted internally.

The bare minimum is one camera, and the FM APRS Tx & GPS. Then it's that + the IBS etc etc.

If your Loox is properly dead - and ignoring the beggars can't be choosers factor - it'd be brilliant if you could scrounge a similar model so that the dead one can become a mass model.

Well - I've just ordered three very VERY cheap 3 megapixel cameras. Cheap enough that I don't care if they get...

1. Broken by me stripping them out to work with a timer circuit
2. Frozen to death
3. Broken on landing via drowning, crushing etc
4. Lost for all eternity - last seen at 95,000ft over Norfolk.

And also - if they're any good at all - I''ll get another half dozen just so we've got 'stock' as it were. Once I know roughly how large their images are, I'll get SD cards to suit the requirements of >3 hrs at 20 second intervals.

For the price of my 400D (which isn't going within 10 miles of a polystyrene fish storage box hung under a giant condom full of helium some idiot from Leicester's going to let go) - I could by 24 of these 3 megapixel jobs. Once I have them (this weekend - I'm away giving a talk tomorrow) - I'll 'calibrate' them to find their actual FOV and work on some sort of internal framework (balsa and/or foam) to mount them at appropriate angles to one another in landscape (if the vertical FOV is >45 degrees) or portrait (if the vertical FOV is <45 degrees)

Before that - I want to figure out how to power all three from one big-ass central power supply, how long that will last, and if I can wire them up into one relay - or if I'll have to power three relays with the one timer circuit relay...to trigger them. Once I've got my mirrors - I'll be figuring out if CatCam can do the GMC campaign on its own - or if I want to tie that in with the same circuit (I think I do)

Meanwhile - got to convince the photographer that she wants to let catcam get trashed....could be difficult.