I have been interested in space balloons and have always wanted to do some high altitude photography, along with a couple high altitude experiments. I have two iphone 4's with cracked screens and would rather send them to space and risk loosing them than selling them on craigslist.
One small problem, I live on a peninsula and am 4 miles from the ocean either direction, and I have no boat to find and recover it. I would like to have a steerable parachute with an ardupilot so it can steer itself to given coordinates. I know nothing about programming arduino, nor do I have the time to figure it out (I run two small businesses, free time and sleep are non-existent).
What kind of programing is needed and would one of you brilliant minds be willing to share this project with me and send the codes so I can just upload them to the board? All it needs to do is upon descent, steer itself left/right to the proper coordinates, go in a circle once it reaches the coordinates, record some data from barometric, temp, etc sensors, and that's it.
If we all work together for open source, we can all do much good for the scientific community.
Thank you all and God bless,
Daniel
Replies
The idea of a steerable parachute is probably not the easiest to realize. I wouldn’t be able to attempt another launch for at least another four weeks because I had to apply for permission from the Civil Aviation Authority again MyPrepaidCenter.com
After my unsuccessful launch attempt in July I wouldn’t be able to attempt another launch for at least another four weeks because I had to apply for permission from the Civil Aviation Authority again myprepaidcenter
Hey Daniel.
The idea of a steerable parachute is probably not the easiest to realize. It may not overcome the wind and the APM is not readily configured to steer it. So maybe consider using a small UAV (plane/copter) to return to home?
I've used an iPhone 4 (with a cracked screen) in order to track the movement of the balloon and recover the payload once it lands. There seems to be a shut-off feature that might be caused by extreme cold. I knew this was the case because I lost signal for days, and when the payload was recovered, the phone turned on with 50% battery life still on it.
With respect recovering the payload without losing it to the water, perhaps a plane that can glide back to the launch site? This way you could just program the ardupilot using the point-click interface on Mission planner. The only programming needed would be to detect rapid descent (once the balloon bursts), and thus kickstart the autopilot.
In fact this was a project I was working on (at my university), except I live at least 3 hours away by plane from any ocean! And yes, open source is great!