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Build Your Own Weather Balloon
Leeji writes "Here is an interesting read about one geek's project to build and launch a weather balloon. The flight recorder is a small $200 Soekris Engineering computer running Bering Linux. It also uses a Garmin GPS, HAM packet radio, an automated Aiptek Pencam Trio digital camera, army surplus batteries, and lots of geek duct tape."
This might not be the best idea during the Orange Alert.
Amazing magic tricks
Just like the US Military!
This is a dupe of the creators original post http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/01/1 5/1829244&mode=thread
just the website is on a different server (tho the original one exists)
well the weather channel partially gets their data from weather balloons, inaddition to satelites
And don't forguet to drop one in roswell...
rm -rf /home/leia
Linux is on the rise.
=)
I want one that can stop Number 6 escaping by air, road or water in a bad-special-effects kind of way
this is a repost. which begs the question, is a first post on a dupe article really a first post?
I have one and it eats power as if it were popcorn, as it keeps it's CCD in an "always on" state so it can respond instantly to requests for picture takage.
One enhancement I would suggest would be to modify the camera in some way so that its power drain was less, even if only for the engineering challenge (he hooked it up to some great big huge massive LiIon cells that would keep a cyclotron going for a while)...
-Mark
The photo gallery of the launch has close ups of the launch director's butt crack! Warning, please! Blech!
no seriously... why would you want to undertake a project like this? I highly dought its for the weather aspect of the project. More likely, I think the builder created the whole project just as a large experiment(as he said several times in the article), and this sort of thing I can relate to and encourage.
So lets think, if I was going to create a large complicated experiment, that involves fairly delacate equipment, would I want to have it floating nearly 80,000 feet in the sky? Thereby greatly increasing the chances of not getting the equipment back in one peice?
Now if it was up to me, I would choose an experiment that wasn't so prone to breaking things(or landing things on the middle of a freeway). For example I would mod my car with some sterio/radio/computer equipment... or set up a large wireless network in my neighborhood... or something to that effect.
Just becuase I made the first post doesn't mean that im a troll...
Selling software wont make you money, selling a service will.
Why do they call it HAM radio anyways?
Correct me if I am wrong,
I think it is just a bunch of hot air.
So one day the weather wasn't right, and this guy decided to build and launch a weather balloon to fix it?
Let's make some weather-balloons, crash them in the desert, send a bunch of military personnel wearing spacey looking nuclear suits to guard the weather-balloons, and then tell the world they are weather-balloons, not alien spacecraft and that UFOs do not exist!
The radio hams have been doing high-altitude ballooning for years. The original poster will probably be quite interested in the site that maintains the unofficial records. Perhaps the most active organization in the area is Edge of Space Sciences, which has conducted 63 amateur balloon flights to date, and knows well how to grease the skids with the FAA.
The weather channel gets their data from hourly
observations taken by weather observers. Every hour
on the hour, everywhere around the world, weather
observers all go outside at roughly the same time
and measure temp, dewpoint, wind direction and
speed, cloud coverage, ceiling, etc. and put it
into an "observation" that is sent to one of the
weather hubs. Then big computers generate surface
charts. Other big computers run analysis on that
data and spit out forcast models. Those models are
then sent out to people that want them. There are
usually really lame errors like weather fronts
being truncated or way off. The "forecaster" then
modifies these projected models and incorporates
then into his forecast, then sents his forecast
for his area back out to the big computers. The
weather channel then pays to steal that forecast
information from the big computer, and put it on
their screen doing little to no actual work in
the process. They also buy their pretty satellite
images from someone like kavouris probably.
Weather balloons, along with PIREPS or "Pilot
Reports" fill in some of the blanks in the upper
atmosphere and over the oceans, but I'd hazard
to guess that doppler radar technology that allows
you to know wind direction and speed at a great
distance away and great altitude is slowly filling
at least part of that.
The most important thing any republican needs to know.
Ham radio geeks have been launching baloons [and rockets] with smart payloads for years. Launching is the easy part. Tracking it down and recovering it is the hard part.
if a dupe falls in the forest and nobody is there to first post it, was it really a fish in the first place?
A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with. - Tennessee Williams
"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept." -JFK
Not to say that there isn't wisdom in questioning "do I really want to launch a couple hundred dollars worth of equipment into the air", but it alone shouldn't stop you.
-=sig=-
The Mobile GPS Demonstration Platform project, which has even more geek coolosity than weather balloons. ;-)
Chaeron Corporation
I hope this thing comes down close to my backyard, or maybe I could shoot it down. Thats some free hardware!
Oh wait, gps, so he would know where it was when it disappeared...
Seriously though, sounds like a pretty expensive wad of cash to just throw into the wind.
I took the time to read the whole thing.. and I must say it was very good, maybe a little extreme, but very good peice of reading.
Selling software wont make you money, selling a service will.
good point.. but there is a differnce between JFK pushing a nation to go to the moon, and a single person dropping money and time into a project that has been done countless times before.
Selling software wont make you money, selling a service will.
what with the US government being suspicious of anything metallic (much less airborne) which beeps, whirs, clicks, or buzzes. unless, of course, they made/bought it, in which case, it's forced upon us for our own safety, regardless of our own opinions about big brother ramming GPS in every citizens ass.
"Life is great; without it, you'd be dead." -Harmony Korine
Actually, :)
:) I'm considering this radar as it's the
Doppler weather radar works for wind speed and
direction pretty much always because there is
always enough reflective material in the air no
matter how much water vapor is present. It works
across a "volume coverage pattern" that is made up
of many "cones" made through repeated 360 degree
scans at varying angles. This is how you can nail
with extreme accuracy what distance and height
air is moving at what speed and direction.
Granted, I'm basing this on real world experience
as a certified Unit Control Position administrator
on the WSR-88D NexRAD doppler weather radar for
3 years.
one that is in place at most official reporting
stations. The military loves the thing.
You were close though.
The most important thing any republican needs to know.
No, Orange Alert is the best time to send up a weather balloon.
P.S. If I hear that George W. has hired a mute midget butler, I'm moving to Canada.
but can you build your own internet bubble?
Amateur ballooning can be quite a bit of fun. There is a small but active ballooning sub-hobby within the ham radio hobby. Ham radio is an ideal medium for transmitting telemetry from balloons, since we have access to cheap high quality (and high power) equipment.
:o It was still cool IMHO. Check out this kick ass map of the balloon's track.
:/ At last check, it was at 00.000N 000.00W. They didn't launch any more balloons that day.
I participated in a balloon tracking experiment not too long ago. The students of Timberlane Regional High School of Plaistow NH launched several high-altitude balloons carrying APRS transmitters, as a part of their CAPSAT (Coordinated Algebra (II) & Physics Simulated Satellite) project. I was able to track two of them. The balloons carried GPS receivers and ham radio Automatic Position Reporting System transmitters.
The launch was from Hopkinton NH. The first launch went well, and we received good signals from the balloon all the way out into the Atlantic ocean. This was quite a bit farther than they expected the baloon to travel, they had planned on recovering and reusing it
The second launch was also a success, and the baloon only traveled about 50 miles before touchdown. Map is here.
The third launch went up with the GPS receiver turned off
My tracking station consisted of a Kenwood TH-D7 radio and a PowerMac 7500 604e-180 running XASTIR on Yellow Dog Linux. The full results of the day (and APRS logs for the entire hamfest) are here.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
I liked this story a lot, even more the second time I read it =]
...well written, quick to load, and it gave me several ideas (that I probaly won't act out on).
/. - "privatly launched satelite runs Linux"
However, it seems like the gear he used should be lightweight and robust enought to pack into a rocket - espesially if you take off the strobe and beeper. Maybe upgrade the radiotransmitter (and check the reciver before launch), and send it into orbit?
Just an idea... but what you think? That would make an interesting article on
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
I've never really understood how so many dupes show up on Slashdot. Until now.
I stumbled on this site when I was trying to figure out how many solder points would go into a home-made modem for a bbs. I thought it was cool, and didn't recognize it as a dupe even though I read /. The page-views were in the low hundreds, so I felt safe that it hadn't seen much traffic. So I submitted it.
Feel free to troll in response to this, because I won't reply to them anyways. But for those with an open mind, you might like to know one way a dupe can legitimately happen.
It all goes downhill from first post
The fact that it runs Linux was just one cool part of the project
Exactly. That's why my summary also mentions the GPS, HAM Radio, Digital camera, surplus batteries, and Perl!
It all goes downhill from first post
soon, very soon. Mods love to mod down.. wouldnt make sense to mod up the good posts would it now? duh what am I thinkin!
moo
More importantly, does he have plans to make a few of them and strap them (and himself) to a lawnchair? (seriously - google "lawnchair pilot")
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
What happens if the thing comes down on a street, a house, or a human??
a dupe
will the government come and confiscate the wreckage and bodies, then tell the public that it was just a ... oh crap.
Doesn't seem hard to do at least a little correlation and show editors the top few matches. Would catch 90% of the dupes for 10% of the effort :-)
DROS - Open-Source Robot Software
This site is a hoax! I mean really, an unemployed slashdot reader who can spend $1000 on a computer to send up in a balloon? And his girlfriend lets him?
Girlfriend? yeah, right.
I was wondering - wouldn't it be possible
to use cell phone for communications? Perhaps
with some antennae booster. Will simplify some design. If you take smart phone, like Handpsring Treo, it could be flight computer as well.
So this geek pulled this off with a minimum of thought. I admire the fact he did it, and was able to recover the baloon. But really, if he had put a little more thought into this, he'd probably have a much better geek experiment. That's why its version 1.0
:-)
The first time he ever tried assembling the whole thing was sitting in a park the morning of the launch. He had never weighed the whole thing until then, and then just randomly filled the balloon until it "seemed right", but that only got him about 60% of the lift he wanted.
Aligator clips on batteries. Ugh. Plus a quick run home to solder up a permanent connection while his friends hung around the park. Some staging for the week before the flight would have eliminated lots of these little problems.
He didn't check his ham frequency to see if others were using it, and his QRM walked all over other amateurs in the area, and their chatter kept his unit from receiving commands. Bad ham, no cookie!
Obscure perl bugs. Wouldn't be a geek experiment without them.
Bubble wrap for electrical insulation. ZZZZzzzzaaaaapppp!!
Here's to hoping Balloon 2.0 makes it into slashback soon (or just another dupe from CT). With more hacked up sensors, better photos, and a flight track out past Kansas
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
Absolutely. ;)
I'm sure he learned a lot and had fun doing it though... even if he just learned not to launch $200 worth of equipment
Cheers
Jim
-=sig=-
On this page:
;-)
http://www.soekris.com/products.htm
something like this (emphasis mine, &
I've removed "available" a few times):
FreeBSD most -powerful- x86 open source Unix
OpenBSD most -secure- open source Unix
NetBSD most -portable- open source Unix
Linux most -popular- open source Unix
Does anybody have a different idea on this?
&, on non-x86 hardware, what's the most powerful UNIX?