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Taking Linux to New Heights
JimDog writes "Literally. I've created a web site documenting the
construction and launch of a high altitude 'weather' balloon, with a payload that runs Linux. The project was a great success, reached an altitude of 80,000 feet, and took some really amazing aerial photos."
scan the first page, neat project. Looked at one picture, and *WHAM* ./ effect.
/. End of Saddam's war machine.
*sigh*
We really dont need a war in iraq.. we just need to get the IP's of their main machines and post a story on
Guess I'll check back later tonight. Neat pictures though! I can see one being wallpaper in the very neat future.
Maeryk
Feminine Protection? What is that? A chartreuse flame thrower?
Sorry, but you've been beaten by a few years and several hundred miles. Linux has already been in orbit aboard the space shuttle several times.
The point isn't that it is running Linux, the point is that he made a really cool project that floated to 80,000 feet and took pictures, AND he got the whole thing back to retrieve the pictures. To me that is awfully impressive. The fact that it runs Linux was just one cool part of the project.
I actually thought this machine would be more up to the task. It's a PIII-450 with plenty of bandwidth.
:)
I think it's the Perl CGI that runs the photo gallery that's killing it.
For the curious, the load average on the machine
is currently about 40
"The project was a great success, reached an altitude of 80,000 feet, and took some really amazing aerial photos."
Shortly after, we got a photo of a cartoon-esque hole in the ground shaped like a penguin.
Unemployment for me means sitting around the house reading /. and wearing sweaters because I don't have enough money to turn the heat on. Who has this much disposable cash when they aren't working? Still, very cool.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Does anyone know what kind of bandwidth usage to expect when your site gets posted to /.?
This guy admits that he thought his p3 450 with a "fat pipe" would handle the load, but I belive /. generates more than 60,000 hits per hour, or 1 thousand hits per second when a "interesting" story gets posted.
Now, add in images or multimedia and you've really got some resource usage.
The article would have been far more interesting if it was titled "linux hacker flies balloon and joins mile high club."
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
"Literally. I've created a web site documenting the construction and launch of a high altitude 'weather' balloon, with a payload that runs Linux. "
Now Linux users everywhere will know what the weather's like outside!
The PIII-450 is actually handling the load quite well now. I disabled the photo gallery and pointed the photo links directly to the static content.
Load average is less than 1 now.
I don't know what the hit rate and bandwidth utilization is like, but I'll do some Apache log analysis later and find out.
Nice hack, but it can be done for much less money.
BG Micro sells Motorola OnCore GPS boards for about $20. They also have just the pigtail connector for a serial port, but who's complaining?
The single-board computer is nice, but you can find similar (and better) boards for much, much less than $200. Simply graze eBay for a few weeks, get a feel for what's there. I recently picked up a single-board for $40, comes with everything including four serial ports, and still retails for about $500. Same board that John uses in the Armadillo project.
And using Basic Stamps...well, let's just say I never liked the idea of paying $50 to $90 for the exact part I could buy from Microchip for a couple bucks. Nor the idea of writing slow code in Basic, as opposed to tasty assembler and absolute hardware control.
The chase description was great though; trucking down the freeway trying to log into a balloon that's well over any airline traffic, hoping it doesn't land in someone's windshield...or swimming pool. Makes the model rocket hunts of my youth seem pretty tame, even the time we found the rocket neatly draped on the front doormat of the mean neighbor lady's house....
...
This was a really neat project, a great combination of hacks! The writeup is great too, some serious effort went into that.
:)
Since I see that you are reading the comments:
What was the total cost of the project?
At the beginning you said that you would call the FAA NOTAM when you were going to make the launch, did you make that call? If so what did they say?
HABET (High Altitude Balloon Experiments in Technology) is one organization that has been doing this for years (I believe there are many). About 4 years ago I helped on a project that used two cameras, one with color film and one infrared. The cameras were triggered based on GPS altitude data so we examine the resulting photos and determine the difference in atmospheric interference (the clouds and graininess you see in his pics) and potentially combine the data from the color and infrared film to eliminate the interference.
I don't know where the interference-correction went since I graduated and fled the state, but I do know that triggering the cameras based on GPS altitude worked because I wrote that portion of the PIC code. There's something very satisfying about lifting a payload a few feet into the air and hearing the cameras go *click* when you reach an altitude threshold. Kudos to this guy for making so many pieces come together.
-FF
SQUEAK, the Death of Rats explained.
I believe that most airliners fly much lower than 80,000 feet. It looks like the airport's airspace is Class B which only goes to 10,000 feet. Airspace over 60,000 feet is Class G uncontrolled. I wonder if he could have tracked his balloon using the spiffy java San Jose Airport Monitor? ;)
Didja read the article?
He said that he waded through the FAA phone system, talked to a lot of clueless people and eventually planned to put out a NOTAM (Notice to Airmen) about the ballon in the area. He also specifically put a radar reflector on the balloon , and complied with the various FAA requirements on weather balloons.
Air traffic control (if any) would have spotted the radar reflector on it and manouevered traffic around it if necessary.
And the odds of one cubic meter object (balloon) intersecting with another cubic meter object (engine intake) are pretty low, considering the large volume of airspace - a 1x1x1km cube is a thousand million cubic meters, and he was pushing upwards of 20km high.
Seems like he did enough to me.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
> What was the total cost of the project?
:)
:)
Right around the $900 mark I think. I had intended to keep a really accurate account of that, but I've misplaced some of the receipts now. I also resold some of the hardware that didn't work out on eBay.
> At the beginning you said that you would call
> the FAA NOTAM when you were going to make the
> launch, did you make that call? If so what did
> they say?
I did call them. I told them I was launching a
weather balloon. They asked, basically, when,
where, how big, what's your name? Once I'd
answered those questions, they said, "Okay,
thanks." and that was it
It's more than a little cool. Just 20 years ago something this technically sophisticated would have sounded impossible. Heck 20 years ago it might have cost NASA $500K, taken 2 years to develop, had half the features, and suffered a systems failure 17 seconds after launch.
/.ed, and say "it's been done before."
We're jaded. We have no real sense of the size of things anymore. Rocket Guy is still talking about launching himself 30 miles straight up in a home-made rocket. Let's hope he does and he survives. But I'll predict now that the day after the event everyone here will shrug, bitch about his web server being
=^..^= all your rodent are belong to us