Our buddy Nathan Siedle, the CEO of Sparkfun, has started a great series of posts documenting his high altitude baloon project. It starts here, but the really cool geek-out over sensors and wireless starts here.
Here's the custom PCB:
Sensors include:
- GPS
- Accelerometers
- Pressure
- Temperature
- Humidity
- Ambient light
- Battery level
Plus long-range wireless modems and onboard datalogging.
Sadly, the wireless link was lost and the balloon and the electronics are somewhere in the plains of Eastern Coloradao.
Comments
http://www.gpsboomerang.com/content/view/19/33/
http://www.davidankers.com/?p=11
Might help someone planning to do such a flight, highly recommended as loads of fun!
It is really nice thing, you know we thought to put such type of baloon on our Quadrocopter for increasing flight flight endurance in terms of time in the air.
We calculated the size of the baloon based on the total weight of our quadrocopter in such a way that if we shut down the motors by decreasing the throtle down to zero, the quadrocopter starts decending slowly towards ground and if we increase Throtle then the quadrocopter will move up and sine it is Hidrogen / Helium filled baloon, tied around 1 meter above the quadrocopter with a strong but thing rope, would not touch the frame.
By doing so we calulated that we could increase the flight endurance by 2000 % (Two thausand persent, means 20 times)
With this baloon the Quadrocopter starts lifting up with only less than 10% throtle and it has great application like if you want to have a telecast of a flying field from onloard zoom camera.
Cheers !
Rana