Next weekend, if everything goes well, a 15x30cm carbon deck will fly onboard HAPS-1 -http://www.pegasushabproject.org.uk/wiki/doku.php/missions:haps:haps-1

One end of the deck will be the flight radio, the other is my responsibility, a single camera (Powershot A560 ), stand alone GPS logger (to 18km), and a small wide angle mirror so the camera can see the payload, the chute and the envelope above.

Still working on a hacked firmware for the A560 - but the intention is every minute will include 15s of video, and then 5-10 stills in fairly quick succession - with the hope that the rotation of the balloon will give us some mosaics out of each section.

More details, some photos etc, later in the week.

Congratulations! That sounds very exciting, can't wait to see the pics that - hopefully - come back.

But tell me, is it true you've had to brief Downing Street on the anticipated results of this test flight..?

What, brief the worlds second dullest scotsman ( after Andy Murray ). I'd rather pull my own teeth

Having issues with the expanding foam I use to insulate the camera - might take some work. We'll get there.

Doug

Possibly - and it's only possibly - we'll have uStream from the launch site, and live tracking, if we can, during some/all/none of the flight. More details as and when I have them.

Camera and GPS have their own housing now - reasonably pleased with it - need to tidy it up a bit - but the camera is rigid inside, the gps sits on top - but the battery pack is tucked away.

I'm fairly sure that I'll go with the wide-angle lens to stick on the front of the camera - I'll regret it after the flight if I don't. I'll do back to back tests on image quality, however, to make sure it isn't screwing everything.

We'll be using the chute I bought some time ago with the intention of doing my own project...so it wasn't wasted

Doug

Following on from the high altitude balloon thread, I thought it made sense to make a new thread for (hopefully) next weekends launch of HAPS 1 ( http://www.pegasushabproject.org.uk/wiki/d...ons:haps:haps-1 )

So, what's it like to not require sleep, anyhow?

(Never mind...ramblings from an old dude.) Good luck & godspeed; looking forward to seeing the results!

Just for testing, I did a walk-around with the GPS logger on 10s intervals yesterday

Should drop straight into Google Earth. It starts ratty and all over the place - but once it's had a few mins to get a proper log once we left the house, it's an accurate trace of a walk around the block - no point more than about 2m out.

It'll work till about 40kft - and then hopefully log back on again on the way down. in case of a failure of the flight computer - we can extrapolate the ascent, extrapolate the descent, and where they cross is a rough estimate of apogee

Doug

The 'flight' SD card ( and a flight spare ) have arrived - the Sandisk Extremem III 4gb SDHC card.

From Sandisk.com


OK - not the -50 we may see on flight - and sadly we wont get values for the flight min/max temp (next time maybe) - but it's the sensible option just to get the most robust card I can reasonably find.

After the joy of 200hz Phoenix EDL data - I desperately want to log Acceleration for the next flight. The motherboard doing the work on the avionics side has an accelerometer, but it's very much KISS this flight, and no data volume to save such a a large data set either - but I'm going to push to try and achieve that next time around.

Foam enclosure is finished, deck has foam underneath as a stand-off on which the 1/4 wavelength antenna will go.

The memory card can handle -25 C - that's fine, but what about the camera? A560's nominal operating temperature is only 0 to 40 deg C

Essentially there's not a lot we can do about that... what we CAN do, we do do...

Use Lithium AA cells which dont drop off at cold temps (http://data.energizer.com/PDFs/l91.pdf - OK to -40deg - very expensive at £1 each roughly, but worth every penny)
Give the camera quite a lot of work to do (hence the 4gb card, I intend to fill it on a schedule of 3hrs) thusdumping the 9 whrs of energy from the two cells about as rapidly as possible into the camera which will render itself as heat.
Insulated as well as I can in foam (although the fact that the lens 'opens' means it's not even slightly sealed around the front)
And a 'get up and get down' flight plan to avoid lingering at altitude.

The first, third and last of those has been enough for similar flights in the past.

I feel sorry for the GPS logger on top of the foam -it's only going to have a layer of duct tape between it and the hell outside BUT - thermally speaking, the camera will be a warm glow underneath.

Doing something as simple as a pair of 9v cells dumping to a thin film heating element is just too much complexity and mass. If we mature the project to go for high altitudes or lingering, then I will be aiming to disable the camera's motor-driver lens deployment, keep it stuck out, and match foam around the lens to better insulate.

Of all the things that could go wrong - the camera getting too chilly isn't top of the list by a long long way. DOing it this way has worked for lots of other projects, so I'm happy to go that way. Next time around maybe we log temps internally on the camera, externally on the foam and then in free air under the balloon - using a Picaxe kit or similar.

It's worth mentioning though, that for perhaps 10 minutes, maybe half an hour, this whole schbang will be at 10mbars or less, at -50 degrees, with lots of UV radiation.

Remind you of anywhere

Doug

Doug,
What about the chemical hand-warmers used for camping/hunting? I believe those last several hours. Might not be worth the bother unless there are some definite temperature issues.

Aren't those based on some sort of magnesium compound, or something else rather volatile? I don't know how they'd behave @ peak altitude (or if they'd work at all.)

All I'm directly familiar with is the US military's Meals-Ready-To Eat (MREs)...and those heaters get HOT really fast upon addition of water, plus they emit some fairly nasty gasses if you catch a plume; it'll bring tears to your eyes, and not just because you ended up with "spaghetti" instead of something sort of edible...

Dunno. Packaged chemical heat sources seem to peak out rather quickly & require an external trigger to activate. Sounds complex & risky to me.

At least there will be no perchlorates to deal with.

But seriously, I feel a bit like Rip Van Winkle here. Can you share with us some of the history of this version of your project? Last I heard there were too many restrictions in the UK and you dropped the entire balloon idea. Now it seems like 20 years have past and everything is different. What did I miss???

I simply 'got a ride' with people who know what they're doing - namely James Coxon and friends ( http://www.pegasushabproject.org.uk/wiki/doku.php )

I emailed them and just went over to watch them do some cool things ( drop a parafoil type vehicle from under a balloon, then two normal launches ) - and on the two normal launches, the camera was hung under the gondola, which was under the radio payload. I commented that I'd tried to have a go myself but found it too damn complicated, and then commented that perhaps the camera payload wasn't the best way of doing it - so James basically said 'think you can do better...go on then!'. And so here we are

I promise - some pictures before it goes up - it's not pretty, but it should work

I've looked at the hand-warmer thing - but actually too hot - and they can expand as well - they're a small bag, and taking a bag to 10mbar could burst it, dumping hot chemical gooo all over the camera etc. You have to be careful to use open-cell foam or it can pop-corn all over the place. Bubble wrap can burst as well.

I might add that I recall someone giving me socks that were powered by AA batteries several years ago when I was a hiker. They are meant more for an emergency when your feet are getting cold in a bad way. Lemme see if I can find them online somehwere. For the next flight anyway.

EDIT: http://www.rei.com/product/703131?cm_mmc=p...CFSQdagodWVVYrg

I actually bought some AAA powered gloves - it's a thought for next-time around

OK - no video I"m afraid. The hacked firmware for that just isn't working, and I want an all-night test running just stills. If a miracle happens and I get some CHDK help in the next 24 hrs I may change my mind on this, but it's unlikely...I'd rather be confident of good stills.

Currently - the sequence is this

8 stills ( which takes 30 secs)
Sleep 30s
repeat.

Tomorrow - I decide to use or not use the .45x wide angle adaptor, and placement, if any, of the wide angle mirror.

D

You need more sleep than that or you're going to look like Stu the night he was out partying with John Spencer.

I'm tellin' ya, Dan...nobody needs to sleep in the UK, they just do fun stuff all the time! Still thinking of emigrating.

As it is flight-proven design, I have no doubts anymore

Doug, you as a PI of imaging system should set a good example for ESA and publish the images as soon as you get them - and they better be raw images, not JPEG-s

It'll be JPG's - and they'll be going online as soon as I can get them there. If everything is nominal, then Sat night.

An overnight test with Lithium AA cells, had the script running for 5 hrs, taking 2023 images, before filling the card and stopping, and the battery is still going strong.


Doug

Two week pushback to - Aug 23rd. Short term forecast is for high ground winds - which are not good for launching on Sat.

It means I can do more testing, possibly get a 2nd camera in there, etc etc.

What're the chances of getting video working in the two weeks? Loved their site, BTW, especially the flight control software ("avionics"?) written in Perl. Another frontier falls to the camel!

Quite a few of the earlier flights met a watery end, presumably you wouldn't be considering risking a second camera if you thought this was likely - is it just a case of moving the launch site west, or is the "cut down box" smaller? And a silly idea which I'm sure you've considered, I'm just wondering what the catch is: how about a camera facing vertically down with a fisheye lens?

It's fascinating stuff, thanks for posting it here.

The video now works MASSIVE Kudos to CHDK guru Dave Mitchell who sorted out an A560 firmware for me that works.

We hope to go this Sat - forecast looks quite good

Do you have a Twitter account set up for it?

Yeah, it's getting a bit crazy with every single thing having a twitter acount and tweeting at other tiny things...






it's here : http://spacenear.us/tracker/

Decision made on extra 'goodness'. I'm going to play chicken. No wide angle lens, no mirror. Just the camera, as it is, pointing straight out. Better is the enemy of good enough and all that jazz.

It's 320x240x15fps movies ( 10s ) then 5 stills, looping at about 1 minute intervals.

It's out in the garden right now running a loop with trees and sky to look at for a couple of hours, inside its housing.

On the day, we'll be launching from Churchill College on the west end of Cambridge.

Are spectators welcome?

I wouldn't recommend it - for a reason I can now brilliantly demonstrate....

We've pushed back to Sunday, because the bubble of still air that we were hoping to release in to has decided to take it's time arriving. A Sat predict has changed from a nice flight about 40 miles east, to about 80 miles south. The Sunday predicts are now better than the Sat predicts ever were - with a 40km E flight to about Thetford area.

Chances are - it'll get shuffled again one way or the other, and it's hard enough organising the launch team Best bet is to follow along here : spacenear.us/tracker/ : we'll twitter, hopefully uStream, probably live-track the flight.

Doug

Right - less than 24 hrs to go

Keep an eye on http://spacenear.us/tracker/ tomorrow morning - hoping to launch at 1000-1100 UK time ( so 0900-1000 GMT )

Current predict from the Wyoming uni website ( http://weather.uwyo.edu/polar/balloon_traj.html ) is to a few miles west or Norwich ( attached )

Just packing all the kit and tools we might need before getting a reasonably early night - I leave at 0700 tomorrow to get down there.

The Google Earth link really helps for we foreigners who aren't instinctively familiar with the local geography.

This looks like you are going to get some astounding images if everything works well.

Right - 0640 - early start - I'm packing up the car and heading out to Cambridge. Keep an eye on http://spacenear.us/tracker/ for tweets, possibly ustream, hopefully live tracking, and an IRC channel. The 'live' images from the top are a pre-loaded jpg, but overlayed with realtime time/gps/altitude data from the payload downlinked as SSTV (couldn't get a webcam / hacked canon to work properly in time to take images for that)

I have the A560 with it's firmware ready to go ( 10s of 320 x 240 x 15fps, then 5 stills, then 30s sleep - looped ) - and a backup A550 with just a 20s looping one image script ready to put on instead if the A560 dies during launch prep ( only one will launch )

The uStreamage will probably be from me ( if it works ) on my Macbook Pro - so I'll try and show you all the things happening after launch - and even try and get the launch itself, but I'll be busy doing launch preps so no promises there.

Doug

At Churchill - heavy rain is now dying off to a drizzle. We think we will be launching later than planned - more like 12 than 11

Fun times with the avionics - leaving James to troubleshoot while we have some lunch.

They launched around 14:25 BST, with GSM disabled because it was playing up. Unfortunately the packet radio has been too weak to hear, apparently. The beacon was strong last I heard, though. I think everyone's now wandering around Norfolk in cars trying to track it.

A few random pics of the launch in my webspace. Also got a launch video which I'm figuring out how best to upload.

Wobbly launch video now linked at the above page (or direct link), Apologies for rotation halfway through. Helen says on IRC that they're still getting signals and are hunting in a field in Diss.

Hi all

Doug's better half Helen here. Have been keeping the IRC thread up to date with news all day as and when Doug called or texted, due to the lack of ustream and tracking data.

About 15 minutes ago i had a call to say they had seen the balloon. They were hunting around a lady's paddock where they had tracked the beacon to, and she was helping them look. She then spotted the red material of the parachute in a neighbour's field, and he was around and kindly let them in to reclaim the balloon.

It was in one piece, good condition, and the camera worked a treat. The pictures, i have been told, are AWESOME - with black skies, bluey atmosphere, clouds and even a bit of the curve of the earth. The movies have worked too.

Doug says that pictures and videos will follow - but he won't be home here til nearly midnight GMT, so don't expect them for a few hours yet!

My congrats to the balloon team and hello to all those who followed the day on mibbit

Helen

Breaking news: I have just received a picture they took of the payload on the ground

Congratulations on an exciting and successful mission.


Paolo Amoroso

Ack - i just realised how dreadfully euphemistic that sounds...

Anyway Doug's home now, so I'm sure pics will follow very shortly...

Thanks Helen. I wasn't aware of any other place to follow the events of the day, so I've been checking back here. Sounds like you'll want Doug to leave his shoes outside when he gets home. No telling what he stepped in out there.

Launch at 1425 BST (1325Z)
Apogee at 1628 BST (1528Z)
Landing at 1712 BST (1612Z)
at 52.443499°N
1.203319°E

Amazingly, with a 10s out of every minute chance - I think we got all three events at least partially as videos.
Not sure of Apogee height yet.

Attached, one cool movie from near apogee, and one cool still during flight, and the scene at landing.

130 mile drive home. Shattered. More funky pics tomorrow - ALL the stills and vids will get uploaded over the next few days ( 3 gig ) . Not got full KML's yet - I may have KML's for the bottom 'half' of the ascent (cheap GPS craps out at 18km ) - but if I had to guess - I would say we ticked the 100,000ft box - we have SO MANY amazing image from altitude.

Kudos to James Coxon for the avionics half ( even if it didn't go to plan, it went enough to plan to get it back ), Ed and Fergus for the epic amount of experience, and Steve for his awesome Radio + Yagi signal finding technique. And Helen, our press officer and outreach coordinator Everyone played their part and it wouldn't have worked without all of them.

My stand-alone GPS logger excelled itself. I thought it would crap-out at 18km


926 24/08/2008 15:59:59 5222.0828 52.95 19.1 23919

that's it at 23.9km - the next record

927 24/08/2008 16:33:21 5224.0947 50.7969 52.1 23942

33 mins later - back at 23.9km 16:28 was apogee in the GPS 'hole' of coverage on my logger.

Here's altitude against time (mins from launch) . The thick part is actual data points. The thin is rough extrapolation after it hit the GPS 'hole' for cheap GPS I'd say 32km is a fair estimate - 104,000ft

Hopefully we'll have a better figure from the GPS on the avionics board, but I'm not 100% sure.

Congratulations Doug. That is just about the coolest darn thing I've seen anyone I know do on a Sunday afternoon.

Pretty good guess at the burst altitude which was 32337.4M (106093.8ft)

The full gps log can be found at http://www.pegasushabproject.org.uk/wiki/d...s:haps-1:biglog

James

http://www.pegasushabproject.org.uk

Edit: Also the kml file can be found on the HAPS-1 page: http://www.pegasushabproject.org.uk/wiki/d...ons:haps:haps-1

Outstanding! And congratulations!

Here is an image from NEODAAS/EUMETSAT Dundee Receiving Station (http://www.sat.dundee.ac.uk/auth.html) of the NOAA-18 image of the UK taken at 1318 UTC. (Roughly 2 h before the balloons maximum height).

Click to view attachment

I think the first black sky image you posted might've been pointing towards the NNE (cloud shadows kinda look that way too.)

(And the fist movie you posted might be looking towards the S?)

-Mike

So when can we expect raw images to hit the raw pages?

Great stuff, guys, the high altitude shot with the black sky is awesome. Can't wait to see more. Have you thought about taking the next step - say strapping a solid booster that kicks in when the baloon pops and shoves you another 10 km higher or something?

I want to try and add lat/long/alt to the EXIF of the stills, (proper PDS headers...PAH) then upload them all. It's 850+meg of stills - so it'll take a few hours - but it will happen - and probably today.

Doug

Holy bit! Folks, get yourself golden spaceflight pins, quick!


Paolo Amoroso

Many congratulations to all concerned!

And thanks for the new desktop background!

Andy