I thought I had posted our balloon flight on my blog, but I guess I only posted it on Kickstarter. Go here to view what happened when we launched our balloon. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/269165830/project-daedalus-5th-grader-sending-camera-to-near/posts
After our balloon was lost at sea on July 14th it floated to the north end of Charles Island just south of Lopez Island. Around the end of July, John Droubay who lives on Lopez Island was canoeing by Charles Island and found our payload container. He contacted us, as our name was on the container and, even though the cameras had been sitting in the saltwater he was able to recover the SD cards and send them to us.
The cards contained some pretty awesome pictures we have put a few of them up on Photobucket you can view them here: http://s1069.photobucket.com/albums/u463/daedalus999/?start=all
So even though we never got any of our equipment back, and it was ruined in the saltwater, we did get back the most important things, pictures!
Thanks again to John Droubay of Lopez Island for recovering our payload and making this a successful flight.
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
We are planning to launch our balloon Saturday, 14th. We are planning on launching from north of Mount Vernon, Wa. as the winds are looking to be very good. We are choosing to launch on this side of the mountains instead of eastern Washington, since the balloon predictor website shows the balloon landing in an area we can't reach.
Here are the instructions for tracking with the cellphone we have onboard. Go to www.accutracking.com. You will login with the username tobey and password will be wava.
That will bring you to the next page and you should see two tracking units, one will be named Balloon for the balloon, and the other one will be named Darwin which is the cellphone in the car with us. It should look like the following page.
You can then click on either one and click View history and it will show you the track for that one.
If you want to view the overall progress showing both units, just go back out to the main tracking page by clicking the Tracking button in the upper left hand corner of the page. And then you will see both units together again.
We plan on launching around 10 AM US Pacific time, if you go to this page Saturday morning and there is nothing showing then we probably haven't started transmitting yet. If for some reason we do not launch July 14th, then we will send out another notice letting everybody know.
The following will be information on how to track the SPOT TRACKER GPS we also have onboard.
Friday night the day before the launch we will post a link such as this one http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=02hNKOVqbQMkWSGlgRjm6Z6HZradgjliC
You can click on this link, as it is a test link to see how it works. We will post another link Friday night that you should use saturday morning July 14th. It will take you to a page that looks like this.
Again, if it says no information available it is because we haven't started transmitting yet. The SPOT TRACKER updates about every 12 minutes, you will have to refresh your page to see each new track. You can click on the tracking bubble and it will show you the latest information such as this.
You can also change your map styles to satellite view or hybrid, whichever you prefer. And it will look like this.
So there are two ways you can track the balloon progress. The first one we talked about was accutracking.com which was the cellphone. And the second was the Spot Tracker, and we will be giving out a new link Friday night for that. You can check both of these out ahead of time by clicking the link above, or by logging into accutracking with the username and password we talked about.
Here are the instructions for tracking with the cellphone we have onboard. Go to www.accutracking.com. You will login with the username tobey and password will be wava.
That will bring you to the next page and you should see two tracking units, one will be named Balloon for the balloon, and the other one will be named Darwin which is the cellphone in the car with us. It should look like the following page.
You can then click on either one and click View history and it will show you the track for that one.
If you want to view the overall progress showing both units, just go back out to the main tracking page by clicking the Tracking button in the upper left hand corner of the page. And then you will see both units together again.
We plan on launching around 10 AM US Pacific time, if you go to this page Saturday morning and there is nothing showing then we probably haven't started transmitting yet. If for some reason we do not launch July 14th, then we will send out another notice letting everybody know.
The following will be information on how to track the SPOT TRACKER GPS we also have onboard.
Friday night the day before the launch we will post a link such as this one http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=02hNKOVqbQMkWSGlgRjm6Z6HZradgjliC
You can click on this link, as it is a test link to see how it works. We will post another link Friday night that you should use saturday morning July 14th. It will take you to a page that looks like this.
Again, if it says no information available it is because we haven't started transmitting yet. The SPOT TRACKER updates about every 12 minutes, you will have to refresh your page to see each new track. You can click on the tracking bubble and it will show you the latest information such as this.
You can also change your map styles to satellite view or hybrid, whichever you prefer. And it will look like this.
So there are two ways you can track the balloon progress. The first one we talked about was accutracking.com which was the cellphone. And the second was the Spot Tracker, and we will be giving out a new link Friday night for that. You can check both of these out ahead of time by clicking the link above, or by logging into accutracking with the username and password we talked about.
Monday, June 25, 2012
We changed our styrofoam payload container to one that was a little smaller and had thicker walls and lid. This will help ensure that the lid doesn't break when it's being pulled up. We will have the cameras located in the bottom and a styrofoam shelf above them to hold the tracking equipment. We were hoping to launch this past weekend but it didn't work out. This coming weekend, the last weekend of June wont work because my grandparents who will be monitoring the balloon progress online will not be home.
We need to have someone monitoring it at home incase we don't have cell service on the road we are now thinking we might be able to launch the balloon the first weekend in July. We will post a couple days in advance of launching to inform everybody and to give you the tracking page link.
If you notice in the picture below we took an AV cable and cut the ends off of it and plugged it into the cameras AV port. This will keep the camera display shutoff during the ascent to conserve battery power, the cameras don't have the option of turning the screen off so this is an easy fix.
We need to have someone monitoring it at home incase we don't have cell service on the road we are now thinking we might be able to launch the balloon the first weekend in July. We will post a couple days in advance of launching to inform everybody and to give you the tracking page link.
If you notice in the picture below we took an AV cable and cut the ends off of it and plugged it into the cameras AV port. This will keep the camera display shutoff during the ascent to conserve battery power, the cameras don't have the option of turning the screen off so this is an easy fix.
Monday, June 11, 2012
We activated our SpotTracker and tested it out when we went to my school picnic here is a link to the tracking page so you can see what it looks like. http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0ak2z7sQg8BW54684Jqk3eRKVApcKkp3M (When you click the link and it doesn't work, reload the SpotTracker page, or paste the link in your address bar.)
On the map you can select different views such as sattelite, terrain, or both, sattelite looks the best. Tomorrow we are going to be activating and testing our Motorola cellphone. The SpotTracker seem to work very well and was quite accurate so hopefully it will be much easier to locate the payload container when it lands.
Saturday we received our weather balloon when we handle the balloon we will have to wear latex gloves to protect it from damage and oil from our fingers which can cause it to burst prematurely.
If the winds will cooperate we are planning on maybe launching in the weekend of June 23rd. We can only check the winds 3 days in advanced so we never know till the last minute. Once we know when we are going to launch we will notify everybody along with the link for the tracking pages. We are getting close!!!!!
Thanks, Tobey
On the map you can select different views such as sattelite, terrain, or both, sattelite looks the best. Tomorrow we are going to be activating and testing our Motorola cellphone. The SpotTracker seem to work very well and was quite accurate so hopefully it will be much easier to locate the payload container when it lands.
Saturday we received our weather balloon when we handle the balloon we will have to wear latex gloves to protect it from damage and oil from our fingers which can cause it to burst prematurely.
If the winds will cooperate we are planning on maybe launching in the weekend of June 23rd. We can only check the winds 3 days in advanced so we never know till the last minute. Once we know when we are going to launch we will notify everybody along with the link for the tracking pages. We are getting close!!!!!
Thanks, Tobey
Friday, May 25, 2012
We received our parachute. It is a 5 Ft. parachute which will have a descent rate of 15 Ft. per second. It has a loop at the top of the parachute that the line going to the balloon attaches to it. At the bottom of the yellow lines there is also a loop to which the lines going to the payload container attach to. The parachute is just situated between the payload container and the balloon. When the balloon pops and the payload container starts to fall then the parachute just fills with air.
We started trying to figure out how to arrange everything in the styrofoam payload container. The styrofoam cooler measures 12 in. wide X by 12 in. deep X by 14 in. long. We are trying to arrange things so the weight distribution is even. With everything in the box and including the parachute it looks like it will weigh 3.6 lbs. We will be ordering our balloon Monday. We had to wait to order the balloon until we had everything and could weigh it all. Now we can call Kaymont Balloon and it will be able to tell us exactly what size of balloon we will need.
Hopefully by mid June the winds will be calmer so we can launch our balloon and have the landing spot not so far from the launch point. Thanks, Tobey.
We started trying to figure out how to arrange everything in the styrofoam payload container. The styrofoam cooler measures 12 in. wide X by 12 in. deep X by 14 in. long. We are trying to arrange things so the weight distribution is even. With everything in the box and including the parachute it looks like it will weigh 3.6 lbs. We will be ordering our balloon Monday. We had to wait to order the balloon until we had everything and could weigh it all. Now we can call Kaymont Balloon and it will be able to tell us exactly what size of balloon we will need.
Hopefully by mid June the winds will be calmer so we can launch our balloon and have the landing spot not so far from the launch point. Thanks, Tobey.
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
We got the software all loaded on the cameras, and tested them for several hours automatically taking every 20 seconds. Everything worked perfectly.
We received our Spot Satellite Tracker, and we will need to activate and subscribe to the tracking service. The basic service is $99 a year plus $49 dollars a year for track progress which allows people to track it live online. Unfortunately you cannot subscribe for only a month, you have to subscribe for a whole year at a time. The nice about the Spot is it works even where there is not cellphone coverage.
We also received our Motorola Boostmobile cellphone, and an auxiliary battery supply to plug into the phone.
The external battery pack has 2 double A batteries in it and will help keep the cellphone alive so it will continue to transmit its GPS location. We will subscribe to Accutracking which will allow us to track the phone which will be in the payload container. This will give us two ways to track the payload container in case one of them quits working.
All of our devices will be using Energizer Ultimate Lithium AA batteries. The last much longer then regular batteries and can survive very cold temperatures. They also do not slowly go dead, they hold their full voltage until they are almost dead and then they just go to 0 volts.
We received our Spot Satellite Tracker, and we will need to activate and subscribe to the tracking service. The basic service is $99 a year plus $49 dollars a year for track progress which allows people to track it live online. Unfortunately you cannot subscribe for only a month, you have to subscribe for a whole year at a time. The nice about the Spot is it works even where there is not cellphone coverage.
We also received our Motorola Boostmobile cellphone, and an auxiliary battery supply to plug into the phone.
The external battery pack has 2 double A batteries in it and will help keep the cellphone alive so it will continue to transmit its GPS location. We will subscribe to Accutracking which will allow us to track the phone which will be in the payload container. This will give us two ways to track the payload container in case one of them quits working.
All of our devices will be using Energizer Ultimate Lithium AA batteries. The last much longer then regular batteries and can survive very cold temperatures. They also do not slowly go dead, they hold their full voltage until they are almost dead and then they just go to 0 volts.
Friday, May 4, 2012
Cameras and Software
We have received some of our items this week. The first thing I will do is start working on the two cameras. We ordered Canon cameras because we need to modify the software inside the camera so that the cameras will automatically take pictures every 20 seconds.
To accomplish this we will download Canon hack software onto the SD card. The software is called CHDK and we will install this onto the SD card. This will override Canons original software inside the camera. The CHDK firmware allows us to control the camera much more then the original software did. We will be adding a intervalometer script that will control how often the camera takes a picture on its own.
After we get everything we want on the SD card, we will make it bootable so that when the camera is turned on it automatically reads our SD card firmware and follows its commands. We chose the Canon A480 because it allows the hacking software to be installed, and because it is small and light weight which is very important because we have to keep our weight down. It also takes high quality pictures.
Below is the picture of our cameras, once we get the CHDK software installed and working then we will move on to the next step.
To accomplish this we will download Canon hack software onto the SD card. The software is called CHDK and we will install this onto the SD card. This will override Canons original software inside the camera. The CHDK firmware allows us to control the camera much more then the original software did. We will be adding a intervalometer script that will control how often the camera takes a picture on its own.
After we get everything we want on the SD card, we will make it bootable so that when the camera is turned on it automatically reads our SD card firmware and follows its commands. We chose the Canon A480 because it allows the hacking software to be installed, and because it is small and light weight which is very important because we have to keep our weight down. It also takes high quality pictures.
Below is the picture of our cameras, once we get the CHDK software installed and working then we will move on to the next step.
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