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Hardware

Build Your Own Weather Balloon 120

Posted by michael from the if-it's-wet,-it's-raining dept.
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."
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Build Your Own Weather Balloon More

Build Your Own Weather Balloon

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  • alert level: Orange (Score:4, Funny)

    by rnd() ( 118781 ) on Saturday February 22, 2003 @02:03PM (#5360902) Homepage
    This might not be the best idea during the Orange Alert.

    • Re:alert level: Orange (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 22, 2003 @02:07PM (#5360922)
      This might not be the best idea during the Orange Alert.


      Yes, it would be better to wait until it is lowered to Banana.

      • This might not be the best idea during the Orange Alert.

        Yes, it would be better to wait until it is lowered to Banana.

        No, no, you've got it all wrong. You should wait until they lower the Terror Alert to Mauve, or at least Burgundy.

    • You've just got to be kidding me.
      When sending up weather balloons, flying model airplanes/rockets, making robots or building home computers in your garage are cause for suspicion, then perhaps it's time to re-evaluate what a "free society" is. Hrm, maybe the Canadian winter is worth it... wait, Mexico's warm!

      Now shut up and hand over that those Lego Mindstorms!

    • No, Orange Alert [bobbyfoster.com] is the best time to send up a weather balloon. [bobbyfoster.com]

      P.S. If I hear that George W. has hired a mute midget butler, I'm moving to Canada.

  • And fake your own alien coverups! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 22, 2003 @02:04PM (#5360907)
    Just like the US Military!

  • dupe (Score:5, Informative)

    by Stinson ( 564450 ) <cancerouspete@@@cox...net> on Saturday February 22, 2003 @02:04PM (#5360908) Homepage Journal
    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)

    • Re:dupe (Score:3, Insightful)

      by lyle_hanson ( 643968 )
      I'm not one to jump all over the editors for posting dupes; I can sympathize with the amount of stuff they probably wade through. But over the last couple weeks, my sympathy is waning.

      Could it be that hard to at least glance through each day's stories so you know when dupes come in? If you did, wouldn't a "build your own weather baloon" story stand out in your mind at all? If I'm missing something here, please point it out to me.

      On the side of reason, if you see a dupe, big deal. So don't read it the second time. It's like deleting spam; no reason to get worked up over it.... except sometimes it gets friggin' ridiculous.

    • Re:dupe (Score:1)

      by Ivo ( 26920 )
      A system where we could moderate postings would be nice. If more than x people (with moderator privileges) find a story to be a dupe, it could automatically be hidden.

      And I agree that auto dupe checking might also work.

  • Just do it (Score:3, Funny)

    by Branc0 ( 580914 ) on Saturday February 22, 2003 @02:10PM (#5360934) Homepage Journal
    And don't forguet to drop one in roswell...

  • One thing's for sure (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 22, 2003 @02:10PM (#5360936)
    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

  • Dupe (Score:1, Redundant)

    by Syris ( 129850 )
    Dupe, Dupe, Dupe... Dupe of URL

  • repost (Score:4, Funny)

    by pizza_milkshake ( 580452 ) on Saturday February 22, 2003 @02:11PM (#5360941)
    this is a repost. which begs the question, is a first post on a dupe article really a first post?

  • Pencam (Score:5, Informative)

    by Big Mark ( 575945 ) on Saturday February 22, 2003 @02:13PM (#5360957)
    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
    • A little correction -- he hooked it to (non-rechargable) Lithium cells which completely kick the ass of LiIon rechargables.
    • The Pencam uses a CMOS sensor, not a CCD. There's a big difference in quality as well as power consumption.

      Dave

  • Oh great- (Score:5, Funny)

    by kevcol ( 3467 ) on Saturday February 22, 2003 @02:16PM (#5360965) Homepage
    The photo gallery of the launch has close ups of the launch director's butt crack! Warning, please! Blech!
  • Why do they call it HAM radio anyways?

  • Sure it is fun BUT! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Bender Unit 22 ( 216955 ) on Saturday February 22, 2003 @02:23PM (#5360993) Journal
    Correct me if I am wrong,
    I think it is just a bunch of hot air.

  • Let me get this straight (Score:3, Funny)

    by arvindn ( 542080 ) on Saturday February 22, 2003 @02:27PM (#5361009) Homepage Journal
    If there was something around the house that needed to be fixed or wasn't right (at least in my mind), I couldn't think about anything else except solving that problem. My father would sometimes call this a "wild hair." I guess you could say that building and launching a weather balloon became a wild hair of mine...

    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!

  • Other amateur balloons (Score:5, Informative)

    by kennykb ( 547805 ) on Saturday February 22, 2003 @02:30PM (#5361021)
    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. [crosspaths.net] Perhaps the most active organization in the area is Edge of Space Sciences [eoss.org], which has conducted 63 amateur balloon flights to date, and knows well how to grease the skids with the FAA.

  • This is news? (Score:2, Informative)

    by bplipschitz ( 265300 )
    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.
  • Well, go ahead and make wisecracks... but I think this is cool. He's given me several ideas already. That small PC & his modified distro could make a rather cool in-car computer... play OGGs, read position from the GPS, whatever.

  • ...combine a Radio Shack R/C Truck, onboard embedded java processor, GPS, wireless, XML, SOAP, Linux, J2EE, open source and a bunch of other stuff?

    The Mobile GPS Demonstration Platform [chaeron.com] project, which has even more geek coolosity than weather balloons. ;-)

  • Hmmm (Score:3, Funny)

    by PyroX_Pro ( 579695 ) on Saturday February 22, 2003 @02:58PM (#5361131) Journal


    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.

  • 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.
    • Actually there's a standard procedure for notifying the FAA of a weather balloon release. In fact the author talks about it [dls.net]. Next time read the article, or at least skim over it.
      • i'm sorry, i didn't realize the US government had suddenly become a collection of fairly functional agencies working in conjunction with one another. the last time i checked, a vast majority of government agencies were poorly managed, ineffectient, and competitive/uncooperative with other agencies. i guess i should pay more attention to the wonderful advances in government since this new administration took office.
  • but can you build your own internet bubble?

  • Amateur (radio) balloon tracking (Score:5, Informative)

    by n1ywb ( 555767 ) on Saturday February 22, 2003 @04:13PM (#5361508) Homepage Journal
    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.

    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 [mv.com]. I was able to track two of them. The balloons carried GPS receivers and ham radio Automatic Position Reporting System [aprs.org] 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 :o It was still cool IMHO. Check out this kick ass map of the balloon's track. [vtc.edu]

    The second launch was also a success, and the baloon only traveled about 50 miles before touchdown. Map is here. [vtc.edu]

    The third launch went up with the GPS receiver turned off :/ At last check, it was at 00.000N 000.00W. They didn't launch any more balloons that day.

    My tracking station consisted of a Kenwood TH-D7 radio [radiohound.com] and a PowerMac 7500 604e-180 [apple-history.com] running XASTIR [xastir.org] on Yellow Dog Linux. [yellowdoglinux.com] The full results of the day (and APRS logs for the entire hamfest) are here. [vtc.edu]
  • 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).

    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 /. - "privatly launched satelite runs Linux"

  • In defense of dupes (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Leeji ( 521631 ) <`slashdot' `at' `leeholmes.com'> on Saturday February 22, 2003 @04:59PM (#5361741) Homepage

    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 [google.com] would go into a home-made modem for a bbs. [slashdot.org] 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.

  • More importantly, does he have plans to make a few of them and strap them (and himself) to a lawnchair? (seriously - google "lawnchair pilot")
  • Sorry for trolling, but why did this chap had to launch the thing over one of the densest populated areas in the US?

    What happens if the thing comes down on a street, a house, or a human??

  • a dupe [slashdot.org]
  • will the government come and confiscate the wreckage and bodies, then tell the public that it was just a ... oh crap.

  • Obviously faked... (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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.

  • Waiting for Baloon 2.0 (Score:4, Insightful)

    by anticypher ( 48312 ) <[moc.liamg] [ta] [rehpycitna]> on Sunday February 23, 2003 @07:14AM (#5364140) Homepage
    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
  • 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?

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