I can’t make it tonight, I have plans with the wife.
Meeting tonight at 7pm.
I will be out of town next week. If y’all want to organize a meeting without me, that’s fine.
Main word is there’s just busy work and testing until we’re ready to fly. Probably should spend a Saturday on it. Haven’t planned one yet.
Alright. I will be there tomorrow at 7pm, as is tradition.
Goal is to get things that should be working together to work together, i.e. plug everything in and make anything that hasn’t already been made, which should be … probably just the telemetry antennas. I expect to plan a Sunday work day tomorrow as well, since that’s what we really need.
I will be there again this Wednesday at 7.
Last week I learned Harold had a new job that would probably make it a lot harder for him to participate. I will probably need to take more personal action to get this thing done. Good times.
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Hmm. I will either come fairly late (I’m late at work today) or not at all since I didn’t sleep last night. I’m leaning towards not at all, because I think I’ll fall asleep at the space if I don’t skip it.
There’s been some chatter on the Aero / RC Google Hangout about restarting the HAB project.
I’ll reiterate things I said there:
- The project really needs about 2 good solid work-days to be flight-ready
- System integration and testing are essentially the only things left to do
I will let Daniel know I’m bumping the talk thread.
Edit:
In addition, while weekly meetings are nice, there is almost never much time to actually get work done during them. This is why it’s two weekend workdays needed. The same amount of work might take us 3 months if we do it for an hour every other week, and in that time we will change enough things that we will need another 3 months to finish. So weekend workdays. Has to be.
Finally, we are discussing having a meeting on the weekend of the 25th-26th. If you are interested in participating, please reply either in this thread, in the Aero Google Hangout, or on the new FB page letting us know what time will work for you.
Ok I’m here at the space and I’m planning on getting something done while I’m here.
The TODO from last April:
Huh. Looking at that I’m liable to say we actually got things done.
Worst case on the Telemetry Tx is we can use the antennas it came with. Harold didn’t like them since they’re garbage on both weight and aerodynamics, but I’m at a point where I don’t care anymore and just want it to fly.
Long range Tx is still an important consideration. Iirc after looking at the Dragon Link (?) thing it was decided LR Rx decisions could be postponed until after everything else was done, since integration was basically that it’s a drop-in replacement for our current setup.
I think once those two things are handled we can move on to full systems tests of power draw and range.
Once power draw is known, we decide the battery. THEN we can finalize component placement since CG can be known for sure.
Once all that is done, the aircraft is basically complete. We would then move on to testing range more fully and generally building experience so that we’re ready in the event we need to manually fly it in. Then prepare for launch and launch.
The fastest way forward is probably to use the crappy antennas we have, buy whatever long range system with committee money, integrate, test, and fly. It’s not elegant, but I’m going to prioritize completion over elegance here.
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Current electrical layout. Could use rework, but this is fine for now.
HAB_electric_layout_1.pdf (15.1 KB)
Edit: of all that, it’s the Telemetry antennas and the RC Rx module that need to be finalized.
I’ve only been a member for a couple of weeks, but this is a subject that has interested me for a few years. I have a balloon (still sealed in its box) that I would donate to this or future HAB projects. I see in the wiki that the current plans are to use a 350gr balloon, so this one may not be suitable for this particular project, but I am sure we can find something to do with it.
Information from the box:
Kaysam Worldwide Inc.
Balloon Meteorological
General Purpose
Nom. Wt. 800 Grams
Just let me know if it can be used.
-Kenny
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Figure I should make a roster for this project as well. Not sure if there is one buried in the forums, but this one should be easier to access anyways.
Reminder: we’re having a build day on Saturday after the Aero/RC committee meeting.
Update: the project is currently shelved as Harold was the main implementer and he has stepped away from DMS for the time being.
I am not against continuing this project, but I am not doing this for myself so there has to be someone besides me involved. I had a chat with Jay recently and he would like to see this project continue. Depending on his level of commitment and how many new people become interested, it could be reborn yet again.
The current line of thought is we may move BACK to the no-glider radiosonde, since that will reduce electronics complexity to only needing to figure out the RFD 900 (which I have gotten a ways into), the Pixhawk / Ardupilot (also starting to tackle, need to do that for DTFB anyway) and designing an experiment to lift. Harold and Nick knew these things beforehand, but without them SOMEONE has to just knuckle down and get the expertise. And the only reason we switched to going straight for the drone was because Harold was there and could do it all.
As far as the actual balloon goes, we could fly a rock tomorrow, or as soon as we got some He.
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Just out of curiosity… Did anything ever happen with this project? Or did it disappear into “thin air?”
It remains on the shelf.
I’ve launched a few balloons before, if there’s interest in continuing I’d be willing to help out.
Is there some interest? And what was the stopping point? It sounds like electronics issues?
We quit when Harold stepped out. This was about the time we had my Pixhawk (meant to run the project’s drone) and some other Aero things stolen.
Jay may or may not still be interested, but he has become occupied with his Lemons car, and I don’t know how willing or able he is to carve out time from that to work on the balloon. I don’t know where interest is now, but when we stopped, there was only me and Jay left, and I wasn’t willing to invest the learning time required to keep it going. I don’t think I’d be willing to pick it up again unless I thought we were actually going to do something.
The Aero stuff might have been moved since then. I can go check, since I’m up here.
If it’s here, then the main things remaining to do are as above: we needed to get the telemetry running and then we were basically ready to begin testing the systems. But since Harold was the person with all the knowledge on drone electronics, and he quit coming, we were dead in the water. We would also need to replace the stolen things.
Edit: just checked the shelf; the stuff may have been offsited or chucked; it has at least been moved to somewhere I’m not aware of.
In 2017 I designed a board and programmed the Arduino to collect and transmit environmental data for a Plano Amateur Radio Klub and Richardson High School high altitude balloon project. The flight successfully ascended to 92,000 feet and traveled 51 miles. I have the board which was dry when recovered from a lake. The following Richardson Wireless Klub newsletter has two articles on the project.
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I am definitely interested in a balloon project similar in scope and complexity to the one @bpamplin linked to.
Jim
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Hi, just joined the Makerspace precisely build something like this actually. I’ve been working on mostly solo for about 6 months now, but lo and behold, this group has done quite a lot of work. The launch around May 2016 was really impressive.
Instead of APRS, we’re using a pre-existing open network called LoRaWAN to record pressure, temperature, bat voltage, etc. Basically, just have to launch next to a LoRaWAN gateway. Luckily, there’s a small open grass lot in Plano that has 3 or 4 gateways closeby.
Here’s a link to my launch in Plano two weeks ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84gyeqsljZk
It doesn’t have GPS yet, but according to pressure data, it made it to 34,000 feet. Here’s my setup:
- Murata-based board with 915mhz LoRa transmitter
- 3D-printed container box
- 100gram Kaymont 4-foot balloon
I have two tasks to accomplish at the DMS:
- Build a PEM Elecrolysis system to generate 350L hydrogen over 8 hours or so
- A 3D-printed returnable glider using onboard GPS data
It sounds like #2 is exactly what this group was trying to do. But since I’m launching in Africa, my setup is TINY to reduce need for lifting gas… Would anyone be willing to lend me their medium-sized drone for a weekend so I can do some drop tests?
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