High altitude balloon payload, from Sable-3 discussion Options

[nprev]

Yes...Ad astra per scientiam, Doug! ...and please remember to let go of it at launch while both of your feet are on the ground...

[djellison]

Some more bits and pieces have arrived - but there are still a lot of 'unknown unknowns' that we'll need. Thus ignore the %'ge at the end...it's a flawed figure anyway as each step from 1 to 7 probably requries as much time and effort as the cumulative time and effort of all previous steps. I'll do a Vodcasty thing this week - a UMSFB1 Show and Tell.

Doug

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[elakdawalla]

Time to start a naming contest yet?

To make things different, you could require people justify the name choice by writing a haiku in its support

--Emily

[lyford]

elakdawalla
will doug let us really do
haiku named balloon?

[jamescanvin]

Time to start a naming contest yet?

And to start taking entries for the compulsory 'fly your name to...'

[djellison]

Just popped home - the mirrors have arrived - that's all the prospective imaging payload in place - except a final choice on powering them.

The naming is one of those messy things that I've simply eradicated by acronym deployment. UMSFB1 (then 2, 3, 4, 5 etc)

And as for flying your name...there will be just one name flying onboard - it shouldn't take a genius to figure out who's (given the sort of flight involved) but not quite sure how to action that just yet.


Doug

[djellison]

PICAXE AHOY

Got a few relays, and a buzzer, and some AA battery holders today. Wasn't getting 4-5v out of the 3xAA battery holder that the picaxe kit came with - so I got a 4 cell holder, put NiMH's in it ( 5.2v measured ) - and bingo - I was able to program it via the USB cable. Did a few BASIC programs that triggered the buzzer - and bingo

CODE

main:
high 1
pause 250
low 1
pause 1000
goto main

'Bzzz............Bzzzz'

OOo

CODE

main:
high 1
pause 50
low 1
pause 100
high 1
pause 50
low 1
pause 200
high 1
pause 50
low 1
pause 100
high 1
pause 50
low 1
pause 1000
goto main

"Bzz.Bzz....Bzz..Bzz......"

YAY!

Maybe tonight, but certainly later this week ,I want to hook that same 'bzzz' onto a couple of different types of relay I've got - see if they'll do the job for the cameras.

Doug

[djellison]

IT WORKS

I did a simple

CODE

main:
  high 0
  pause 1000
  low 0
  wait 10000
  goto main:

The output of output zero was then wired to a bit of breadboard that powers a relay ( the top one - http://www.maplin.co.uk/module.aspx?Module...5&doy=15m10 ) . The Picaxe project board runs on 5v, and each output will handle 800 mA. The relay's coil is spec'd to be about 500 ohms - I'm measuring it at something like 480ish at the breadboard. So it draws a current of 10 mA for that second. The outputs of the relay then pop to another tiny bit of breadboard which I simply used to make it easier to hook up to the shutter release cables from the camera. The camera is hard-wired to the C-cell sized battery holder.

At first it wasn't working - but then I realised I was asking it to to 'high 0' and then 'low 1' which was just stupid - the Gumby school of coding.

But now - it works Attached - what our sofa looked like just after I turned it off.

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[ngunn]

there will be just one name flying onboard - it shouldn't take a genius to figure out who's (given the sort of flight involved)

Would that be Mr Helium?

[djellison]

Mr & Mrs Latex.

[ElkGroveDan]

I'm hoping that somewhere obvious on it will be a name. As in "If found please return to Doug Ellison....."

Or maybe you should specify on which side of the Channel -- Doug in the UK, Climber or Ant103 in France.

[djellison]

One of the payloads that they let aloft from Cambridge made it to Denmark - and was returned

Doug

[ElkGroveDan]

Better include Bjorn's contact info, just in case.

[djellison]

Just contacted the CAA ( UK's version of the FAA ) asking for regs on unmanned balloons, offering to launch when and where suits them, rather than stipulating such things from our end.

Meanwhile, I"m hoping that by this weekend, I will be able to have all cameras breadboarded ( three internal and one external ).

I'll be switching to pairs of AA Lithium (low temperatures, what low temperatures - they just don't care) cells in series ( to give me the 3v that the cameras require ) but probably four pairs for the three cameras, a further two in parallel for the GMC, and three or four for the PicAxe. The APRS will be off a single 9V

Doug

[djellison]

Video Update 1 - Envelope, Parachute, Gondola
http://youtube.com/watch?v=rkug-Z9Xm5Q

Video Update 2 - Cameras
http://youtube.com/watch?v=gu3P3O3Z3eU

Update 3 - Tracking - on it's way later.