HacDC Wiki - User contributions [en]

Avr2011 kit

2014-02-19T21:51:17Z

Hexagon5un: Tiny explanation added to Schematics, etc

=== Kit Contents ===

You will need:

1) AVR ATMega microcontroller
2) AVR Classboard printed-circuit-board
3) Eight resistors (~120 ohm)
4) Eight LEDs (I like the small square ones)
5) 1 uF capacitor
6) 0.1 uF capacitor
7) Two push buttons
8) 6-pin header to connect the FTDI serial cable
9) A small-signal diode for backward-power protection (optional, but certainly won't hurt)

[[Image: avr2011_kitContents.jpg|500px]]

(D'oh! I left the AVR out of the photo. You should have one.)

=== A Brief Tour of the Board ===

Before you start assembling anything, have a look at the printed circuit board.

[[Image:avr2011_pcb.jpg|500px]]

Big and bold in the center is the location for the AVR chip. Notice the notch in the silkscreen at one end? That corresponds to a notch on the top of the AVR chip, and helps you get it in the right orientation when the time comes.

Just to the outside of the AVR chip itself, you'll see two rows of holes labelled for the port/pin combinations that appear in the datasheet. For instance, just below the chip see the two rows labelled PORTD, and PD0 -- PD7. See how there are tiny white lines connecting the two rows of holes, pairwise? Those indicate that the two holes are electrically connected to each other. This was a convenience -- you can solder two things easily to each AVR pin. One side of the chip has PD0-PD7, the other has PB0-PB7 and PC0-PC6.

Just outside of the AVR connection points, you'll see two more rows of holes, labelled VCC and GND respectively. GND is connected to the board's ground plane, and so is at 0V. VCC is connected to the board's power supply and is whatever voltage you're using to drive the whole mess -- In class, I'll refer to this as VCC or I usually just call this 5V.

And finally, at the edge of the board is another pair of rows of holes. These are electrically connected in pairs, and are just there to allow you to connect things together easily. For the LED array, we'll use these paired holes to connect the resistor to the positive end of the LED.

Other stuff:

To the left of the AVR, there are holes for two buttons, a protection diode, power-supply buffering capacitors, an optional power LED and its resistor, a 3x2 SPI programming header, and the 6-pin inline FTDI cable.

Below the AVR chip area and to the right, there's more prototyping space -- just sets of holes electrically connected to each other in ways to facilitate soldering stuff up.

The power LED and it's associated LED are optional and included for your creative use/abuse. Everyone should solder the coolest LED they can find in here, with a 100-1k ohm resistor, depending on how bright you want it.

And those white areas? They're for writing your initials on. Or notes. Tiny, little notes.

=== Assembling the Kit ===

0) If you're new at soldering (or even if you're not) go spend seven minutes with [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_NU2ruzyc4 the best soldering video ever].

1) To get your feet wet soldering, install the two capacitors. They can go in either capacitor position, and are non-polarized (can go in either way). When you clip off the leads from the capacitors, save the wire for the next step.

2) Now install the two pushbuttons. They're oblong, but there's no top or bottom.

3) Solder in the protection diode. Notice that it's polarized, with a black band on the diode itself corresponding to the little band in the silkscreen.

4) Above the buttons, there are two pairs of holes -- these connect the button to the pin on the AVR when they're jumpered together. (I did this for flexibility so that you could connect the buttons up to other pins later as you wish.) Take two of the leads you saved in step 1) and connect each pair of holes together.

[[Image:avr2011_jumpers.jpg|500px]]

5) Solder in the 6-pin header for the FTDI cable. Rather than doing it the way I did (which covers the labels on the circuit board) why not mount the header on the bottom side like Ed did?

[[Image:avr2011_ftdiInstall.jpg|500px]]

6) Now start on the LEDs -- in PORTB pins PB0 through PB7. They _are_ polarized, and you'll notice that one lead is longer than the other. The short lead gets connected to ground, while the long lead will eventually connect through a resistor to the AVR output pins. (Resistors soldered in next step.) Place the LEDs so that their short leads are in the ground strip (labelled GND), and the long lead is in one of the outside rows of hookup holes. Orientation matters here. Double-check it before soldering?

[[Image:avr1022_rowLEDs.jpg|500px]]

For aligning the LEDs, I had success putting them all face-down on the table, and using the fact that they have rectangular faces. Pro-tip: solder one pin on each LED, make sure they're in a nice line, and re-heat any that you need to wiggle into place. Then solder in the second pin on each LED.

[[Image:avr2011_aligningLEDs.jpg|500px]]

7) Once you've done the LEDs, you can solder in their resistors. These fit most easily and cleanly on the underside of the board, so you'll want to trim off the extra leads from the LEDs before installing. You want to solder each resistor to the outside strip of holes that connected to the positive (long) pin of the LEDs, and the other end of the resistor to the pins of the AVR. Notice that you're working on the back-side of the board! Double-check that you're not connecting the resistor to the VCC line that is closest to the LED.

[[Image:avr2011_LEDresistors.jpg|300px]] [[Image:avr2011_LEDresistors_top.jpg|300px]] [[Image:avr2011_LEDresistors_bottom_done.jpg|300px]]

8) At this point, you can install the chip. They come from the factory with the pins splayed out a little bit -- you can lean the chip into a tabletop to straighten the pins out. Place the chip with the notch on the top of the chip corresponding to the notch in the silkscreen. Double-check. Solder.

[[Image: avr2011_chipBending.jpg|400px]] [[Image: avr2011_chipAlignment.jpg|400px]]

9) Optional fun stuff: Feel free to solder in an artistic power LED and its resistor. (Note the polarization. Short pin downwards, or notice that there's a flat-spot on the LED flange.) Write your name on it. Wire up the battery (black wire to GND).

[[Image: avr2011_kitDone.jpg|400px]] [[Image: avr2011_kitDone2.jpg|400px]]

10) You should now be ready to flash in your first program. Hooray. From here on it's (mostly) firmware!

=== Adding the Light Sensor for Class 2 (ADC) ===

For the light sensor, you're creating a voltage divider with the photoresistor and two legs of the potentiometer used as a variable resistor. The photoresistor is connected to VCC and the AVR pin PC0, and the variable resistor from PC0 to ground.

In the following image, the red pins represent the potentiometer, and the blue are the leads from the photoresistor.

[[Image: avr2011_bare_board_annotated_small.jpg | 500 px]]

Start out by placing and soldering the potentiometer on the underside of the board. Make sure that the smaller center pin connects to the ground lines. Do _NOT_ clip the leads short yet.

[[Image: avr2011_board_bottom.jpg | 500 px]]

Bend one lead on the variable resistor up and over the two other holes on the board, and plug it into PC0. Solder it in on the top side. Now soldering the photoresistor in place should be easy.

[[Image: avr2011_board_topside_soldered.jpg | 500 px]]

Flash in the light sensor firmware and turn the potentiometer until it give you a nice range of values on the LED display. I found that turning it up to _just_ max out in full light works well -- you'll see that it'll get down to one or two bars when you cover the cell with your hand. You're done!

=== Schematics, etc ===

If you'd like to make yourself a class-board, the attached Eagle files should get you started.

Warning: It's a good idea to socket your AVR in the board so that you can remove/swap chips when you want to.

Also, the LEDs in port B will over-ride the SPI port. For the class, we used AVRs with a bootloader already flashed into them, so we didn't use the SPI most of the time. If you'd like to use the SPI instead, you can '''probably''' get away with using large-value (1k Ohm?) resistors for the LEDs. Best is to omit them if you're going to use the SPI a lot, though.

[[Media: mega_classboard_files.zip]]

Finally, if you want something with almost all of the functionality (but none of the style!), Evil Mad Science sells a nice, very cheap, AVR Mega breakout board.

[[Category:Microcontrollers]]
[[Category:AVR_Class]]

File:Mega classboard files.zip

2014-02-19T21:42:12Z

Hexagon5un: Eagle schematics for the 2011 iteration of HacDC's AVR Programming class

Eagle schematics for the 2011 iteration of HacDC's AVR Programming class

Amateur radio

2012-01-16T16:35:17Z

Hexagon5un:

'''HacDC Amateur Radio Group (W3HAC) - Regular meetings 2nd and 4th Wednesdays @ 7:30 pm
'''
'''Next Meeting - Wednesday, Dec 14 @ 7:30 HacDC space.
'''
[[Amateur_radio_station |Radio Station W3HAC Information]]
[[HARC_Projects |Ongoing and Proposed Projects]]
[[Meeting_Records |Meeting Records]]

'''Links:'''

Your friendly local ARRL: info on everything radio -
[http://www.arrl.org/getting-your-technician-license license preparation, etc.]
[http://www.arrl.org/finding-an-exam-session local test times]

Technician class Q & A's
[http://www.ncvec.org/downloads/Revised%20Element%202.Pdf Starts on page 7]
[[Prepping the Ham Exams]]

Handy information
[http://www.icomamerica.com/en/downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?Document=331 Nifty Band Plan Graphic]
[http://www.icomamerica.com/en/downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?Document=415 Gid square map]
[http://www.icomamerica.com/en/downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?Document=521 Ham Radio Lingo]
[http://www.icomamerica.com/en/downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?Document=524 World CQ DX Zone Map]

'''Member interests/activities:'''
creating interest & education in amateur radio (getting HacDC members licensed)
equipment design, building, and tinkering (setting up HacDC station/repeater/web controlled)
APRS (antenna tracker, spaceblimp microcontroller tracker/digipeater)
spaceblimp/nanosat/cubesat (tracking, attitude control system, photography)
HF digital modes & beacon systems
spread spectrum
software defined radio
microwave/high power wifi
direction finding & fox hunting
emergency operations

File:ParseHamExam.py

2012-01-16T16:32:12Z

Hexagon5un: Reads amateur-radio question files, spits out the questions and correct responses.

Reads amateur-radio question files, spits out the questions and correct responses.

File:2011General.txt

2012-01-16T16:31:24Z

Hexagon5un:

File:2010Tech.txt

2012-01-16T16:31:07Z

Hexagon5un: Text version of the amateur radio technician class question pool.

Text version of the amateur radio technician class question pool.

Prepping the Ham Exams

2012-01-16T16:30:19Z

Hexagon5un:

The amateur radio license exams are _not_ hard to study for and pass, and all the resources you need are available online.

The questions you will be asked are a random selection from a known and published [http://www.arrl.org/question-pools test question pool].

One way to study is to just go through the test pool and memorize all the correct answers. But if you read through the pools as-is, they've got all the wrong answers in them too, which I found distracting, and possibly even misleading. So I wrote a small python script that reads the test pool files and selects out just the right answers. The code is awful, but works.

* [[Media:2010Tech.txt]]
* [[Media:2011General.txt]]
* [[Media:parseHamExam.py]]

Prepping the Ham Exams

2012-01-16T16:29:56Z

Hexagon5un: Created page with "The amateur radio license exams are _not_ hard to study for and pass, and all the resources you need are available online. The questions you will be asked are a random selection..."

The amateur radio license exams are _not_ hard to study for and pass, and all the resources you need are available online.

The questions you will be asked are a random selection from a known and published [http://www.arrl.org/question-pools test question pool].

One way to study is to just go through the test pool and memorize all the correct answers. But if you read through the pools as-is, they've got all the wrong answers in them too, which I found distracting, and possibly even misleading. So I wrote a small python script that reads the test pool files and selects out just the right answers. The code is awful, but works.

* [[2010Tech.txt]]
* [[2011General.txt]]
* [[Media:parseHamExam.py]]

Amateur radio

2012-01-16T16:08:48Z

Hexagon5un:

'''HacDC Amateur Radio Group (W3HAC) - Regular meetings 2nd and 4th Wednesdays @ 7:30 pm
'''
'''Next Meeting - Wednesday, Dec 14 @ 7:30 HacDC space.
'''
[[Amateur_radio_station |Radio Station W3HAC Information]]
[[HARC_Projects |Ongoing and Proposed Projects]]
[[Meeting_Records |Meeting Records]]

'''Links:'''
[[Prepping the Ham Exams]]

Your friendly local ARRL: info on everything radio -
[http://www.arrl.org/getting-your-technician-license license preparation, etc.]
[http://www.arrl.org/finding-an-exam-session local test times]

Technician class Q & A's
[http://www.ncvec.org/downloads/Revised%20Element%202.Pdf Starts on page 7]

Handy information
[http://www.icomamerica.com/en/downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?Document=331 Nifty Band Plan Graphic]
[http://www.icomamerica.com/en/downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?Document=415 Gid square map]
[http://www.icomamerica.com/en/downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?Document=521 Ham Radio Lingo]
[http://www.icomamerica.com/en/downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?Document=524 World CQ DX Zone Map]

'''Member interests/activities:'''
creating interest & education in amateur radio (getting HacDC members licensed)
equipment design, building, and tinkering (setting up HacDC station/repeater/web controlled)
APRS (antenna tracker, spaceblimp microcontroller tracker/digipeater)
spaceblimp/nanosat/cubesat (tracking, attitude control system, photography)
HF digital modes & beacon systems
spread spectrum
software defined radio
microwave/high power wifi
direction finding & fox hunting
emergency operations

Makerbot Operators Log

2011-08-04T06:33:28Z

Hexagon5un: /* When you use the Cupcake, please add notes here. Newest at top. */

==== When you use the Cupcake, please add notes here. Newest at top. ====

* August 2, 2011 (Elliot) After a week of playing around, and a bunch of prints, the cupcake breaks again! Yet again, the heater filament failed high-resistance. I replaced it with John's cemented barrel heater (Thanks LJ) which rocks. Here's a time-lapse video of me fixing it. Needs a soundtrack! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fff5scSJA74) Afterwards, ran a 50 min print on it with no issues. Might need tweaking on the PID params or some better insulation, but it's up and running again.

* July 19, 2011 (Elliot) The cupcake rides again! I cleaned out the barrel and re-wrapped the nichrome barrel heater. Using a 100k thermistor from John Yang straightened all of the temperature control problems out. We're back in bees-wax! Printed a groovy hollow pyramid to celebrate (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:8757).

* June 12, 2011 (Elliot) I gave up on the experimental hot end because it doesn't seem to transfer heat into the barrel fast enough with the result that it was very very hard to push filament through. I found some nichrome wire (7 ohms worth) and re-wrapped the barrel in the old style. Grrr... So it wasn't the fault of the experimental heater core. Even though it's wrapped in nichrome as originally, the hot end is still exhibiting the same failure -- extrudes around 2cm then stalls, stripping the teeth. In the process, I managed to fook up the teflon insulator -- time to order a new one. Might just scrounge the entire (working) head off the reprap in the interim. This one probably needs a thorough reaming and cleaning out before it'll run again.

* June 11, 2011 (Elliot) R. Mark Adams dropped a high-temp thermistor by the space, so I'm working on the hot end again. I set up the extruder thermistor for 10K resistance, and the rest looked good (beta = 4450, base = 25). Tested with a cup of hot water at 83 C and it read spot on. I declare it calibrated. (Also changed platform thermistor to 10K.) On first warm-up, it looks like the new heater will work, but the PID coefficients are horribly wrong and it's overshooting the set temperature by quite a lot. Tweaked a little bit, ended up with P=8, I=0.1, D=12. Not perfect, but not patient enough to tune further ATM.

* May 30, 2011 (Elliot) OK, so I re-flashed the firmware on both the extruder (firmware 2.4) and the motherboard (firmware 2.3). If someone wants to order a new thermistor for the hot end, that'd be swell. In the process of updating the firmware, we lost the thermistor calibration for the HBP, so it'll need re-calibrating (it's 110 C is only warm to the touch). Not sure that the all-aluminum hot end heater is getting hot enough -- there was much resistance when I tried to run filament through it. It'll probably need re-jiggering.

* May 29, 2011 (Elliot) Busted even worse now, and I'm in Germany until June 8th. Sorry y'all. The symptoms: The heater core works, but is slow. The replacement thermistors I ordered were low-temp and burned out, so there's no temp feedback. (I've stuck one into the thermistor input directly, you can verify that it reads temperature nearly-correctly. It will fail at 150 degrees, though.) The motor control seems to be not responding, as do the heated platform and nozzle heaters. Is there something wrong in the 12v power section of the board? Are _all_ the FETs burned out? I've double-checked the wiring, but if someone else would go over it, that'd be swell. Extruder motor works when plugged into external 12v. Extruder hot-end is only on finger-tight. If you get it working enough, tighten it back down before use.

* May 23, 2011 (Elliot) Well, the bot is slightly hosed now. I was printing out a bit for a visitor as a demo (figures!) and the heater gave up the ghost -- some of the nichrome wire fatigued and broke. I decided the necessary hot-end rebuild would be a good opportunity to machine out an aluminum cylinder, cut out alu shims to wedge three suitable power resistors inside, and use that as a barrel heater. It works, but takes ten minutes or so to heat up. And then the thermistor we've been using died (open-circuit) leaving the temp sensor always reading 255 degrees C. So now we've got an experimental (slightly slow) heater design with no temperature feedback. Sub-optimal. This will not stand! Stay tuned. [[Image:cupcake_heater0.jpg|100px]] [[Image:cupcake_heater1.jpg|100px]]

* May 16, 2011 (Elliot) OK, so nobody has been writing stuff down in the log. Booo!! I re-levelled the bed last night. Should be good for printing raftless now. I'm working on a no-tweak-necessary profile for a recent skeinforge that'll allow raftless printing. I think we'll need a z-minimum endstop to make that work.

* Mid April, 2011 (Elliot) Printed out wheels, gears, a carriage, and a bowing arm for Alberto and my art project "Carrier". On display at the Artisphere until June 18th. I'll have to do a thorough writeup.

* March 20, 2011 (Will G) Printed a bottle opener. Had to back the blue filament out and refeed it, since it stopped feeding after 20 seconds. After clipping and refeeding the filament, the makerbot happily printed my bottle opener.

* Feb 20, 2011 (Elliot) Saw that the bearing that holds the motor gear in place was slipping out (for the last time!). Measured the diameter of the hole, SCADed up a part, printed it up, and acetoned it in place. Now the bearing is (forever?) captive.

* Feb 3, 2011 (Elliot) Came in to find a relay attached to the extruder head motor. Removed it (because I do PWM) and discovered why it was there -- the motor was stopping intermittently. After replacing the power cable and a few other things, I finally scavenged the (new) motor off of the RepRap, and that did the trick. Printed a few piezo-disc holders for an art piece.

* Jan 30, 2011 (Elliot) Found out what was wrong with the extruder head (just after Xaq left, as usual) which was that the bearing that holds the motor spindle in place had worked out, so that the motor was no longer held tight against the sprung pulley wheel bearing. Unscrewed the motor from the mount, pushed the bearing back in, and it's working again. Next time the extruder head is off, we should probably epoxy the bearing in or something. Printed out a new [http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:975 Z-crank] and then got to work on Xaq's Mendel X-end-motor piece. This was quite hard to get it working with raftless. The tricks: slow the first layer speed down to 0.7 on the infill, 0.45 on the perimeter, and 0.9 for the flow-rate multiplier to keep it from getting too gunky. I also started the prints off with the head a lot closer to the platform than normal. This seemed to squish it down hard, while not putting down so much plastic that it got the hairy over-extrusion condition, which then catches the head on the next pass. It's hard to quantify all this -- we should get a z-axis end-stop installed to establish a reference point.

* Jan 27th, 2011 (Xaq) After a couple weeks of basically flawless printing, the extruder motor seems to be giving up. I saw this today and on Tuesday when Pete was printing a Wade's: after a little over an hour, the extruder motor just stops. After the failure, attempting to control extrusion through the control panel also fails. Pete fixed it on Tuesday by toggling to motor back and forth (I think), but I am not sure how he did that so I am giving up for today. These motors are notorious in the reprap-blogosphere for suckiness, it may be time for a geared stepper....

* Jan 11th, 2011 (Xaq, Peter (?), Elliot) Peter (?) was printing out Mendel parts in three (?) five-hour batches and during a four-hour print, the machine failed. It looks like the barrel clogged up somehow and the resistance messed up the feed section. Specifically, the [http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1004 retaining ring] was all bent and the motor shaft had come out of its bearing. Xaq broke the hot-end down and cleaned it all out, and we re-assembled the head. We already had a retaining ring printed out from before (it's a common superstition to have an extra on hand, and now I see why) so it was just a question of assembly. We noticed that the printed retaining ring design isn't quite centered on the dimple in the [http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4036 brutstruder]. A little work with a file makes it fit right. We then printed out another replacement retaining ring for next time and tossed it in the reprap box.

* Jan 3, 2011 (Elliot, John) Printed out a bunch of cool, small objects for people to see. Then printed out a [http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3780 bolt-hobbing tool attachment] for the lathe b/c John wanted a [http://www.thingiverse.com/image:20063 hobbed bolt] for his Mendel. Then we hobbed it on the lathe and it was rad. The hobbing tool now sits in the reprap box, waiting expectantly for you to use it.

* Dec 30th, 2010 (Will.) Printed out a test cube with the new machines.xml file. Printed some tiny, flat whistles. Found out that whistles are hard to print.

* Dec 27, 2010. (John, Elliot) swapped out the makerbot standard 1/2 microstepping stepper controllers for a 4-axis board using pololu controllers in 1/16 configuration. The bot is much quieter with the 1/16 microstepping. You will have to '''update your machines.xml''' ([[Makerbot machines.xml]]) to use the new 1/16 configuration.

* Dec 20, 2010. (Will.) Printer a bunch of snowflakes for the holiday party. Experimented with raftless printing. Taught Eric how to use the makerbot.

* Dec 20, 2010. (Eric.) Found Will and makerbot in working condition. Printed pretty birthday snowflakes. [[Image: makerbot_snowflakes.jpg|100px]]

* Dec 19, 2010. (Will.) Found makerbot in working condition. Fired up makerbot and extruded some goo for a few minutes, had no problems. Printed a large object, makerbot ran without encountering any problems.

* Dec 17, 2010. (Elliot, Will, Speek.) Replaced the stock v4 extruder head with a self-printed Brutstruder: [[Image: brutstruder_cupcake.jpg|100 px]] Elliot printed some multicolour items for his nieces for Xmas, changing the filament a bunch of times with no problems. Has the brutstruder fixed our filament feed woes?!?!? Stay tuned....

* Dec 10-Dec 15, 2010. (Elliot, Xaq) Much frustration. On-and-off printing, seemingly due to the extruder head not carrying enough force. Got it working with the (wider, more round) white filament, but still having troubles with the (smaller, slightly-oval) black filament. One night when it was working, probably the 13th, Xaq and Nick made up a model for a replacement joystick part. [[Image:cupcake_joystick.jpg|100px]]

* Dec 8, 2010. (Xaq and Elliot.) We spent a few hours trying to figure out why the feed wasn't feeding. It would go for a few minutes then stall -- white filament or black filament. Xaq was thinking it was a rotation thing, and we noticed that the drive wheel wants to twist the feedstock around in a circle, putting a twist in it. Elliot noticed a ton of back-pressure from the hot end, and wonders if that's not to blame.

* Dec 3, 2010. (Elliot.) Printed out a [http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1842 bottle opener] and it worked just perfectly. Noticed that the feed had a kink in it, and clipped and re-fed it. It didn't print sucessfully since. Tried to print the [http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1046 whistle] a few times with no joy. It would stop feeing a few layers into the print. There's something to do with a twist in the feed? Or it the feed slightly oval-shaped and slipping? Fed the makerbot the white ABS feed, which is slightly thicker, and it printed flawlessly. Hmmm...

* Nov 29, 2010. (Elliot and Xaq.) While Xaq was in the space, we both spent about 2 hours of frustratingly abortive 2-minute prints, attempts at raftlessly printing a [http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:49 coathook]. Shortly after Xaq left, Elliot printed a coathook with a raft and it worked well enough (with babying on the feed at points). Elliot then printed [http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1912 dino-2s for the brutstruder] without rafts with only one flaw in the first of five prints. I'm at a loss for what changed: it got later at night, and the machine had been in continuous use for longer. I wonder if the bot needs much longer to warm up than we thought? Anyway, before printing something raftless, I would try printing a rafted small object first as a sacrifice to the makerbot gods (or at least to verify that the machine is working) because that seems to be a lot less tweaky.

* Nov 27, 2010. (Elliot.) Printed small odds and ends, just to watch it go. Looks great. The new spool which Dan B and I built seems to work fine, and certainly won't tangle. Moved it to its own (partly mobile) table. I've been working on raftless settings, and it's looking great. Printed a few of the heater-retainer collars for later in case we need them, and tossed them in the reprap box. It's about 5 hours of printing time since the rebuild and it's behaving flawlessly. Will this continue? Knock on wood.

* Nov 26, 2010. (Elliot.) Having broken the hot end of the extruder, I needed to fix it. Took it completely apart and soaked all the parts in acetone, getting all the melted plastic off. I reinstalled things as per the makerbot instructions, with the exception of using teflon tape to (electrically) insulate the barrel from the nichrome wire, because its original sheathing had come off during removal. Noticed that the brass barrel was installed upside-down, so I fixed that. The nozzle seems to be flowing a lot now -- so much that I had to reconfigure skeinforge to deal with the extra plastic. We'll see if it holds up. Printed out a [http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4036 brutstruder] and the plastic axles for the new feed spool.

* Nov 24, 2010. (Elliot and Will G.) Still having problems with intermittent extruder stoppage. Will and Elliot removed the hot end and cleaned it out. That wasn't the problem. Elliot noticed that the idler wheel was binding, fixed that. Still not the problem, though it has sufficient strength to push through whatever is giving the high back-pressure. Elliot started to re-do the hot end again, and probably messed up the heater in the process. Hopefully it's just a loose wire, but the insulation and heating element may need to be re-worked. Sucks....

* Nov 20, 2010. (Elliot and Tommy) Noticed that gear motor was out of line. Tommy and I added a bearing to it. Extruder still just randomly stops extruding after 15 minutes or so.

* Nov 18, 2010. (Elliot) Printed out some widgets. Extruder head stopped extruding halfway through a print, turned out to be due to ABS bits fouling up the pushing-gear teeth. Also had some troubles with adhesion of the raft to platform.

[[Category:Makerbot]]
[[Category:Printing]]

Makerbot Operators Log

2011-08-04T03:46:26Z

Hexagon5un:

==== When you use the Cupcake, please add notes here. Newest at top. ====

* August 2, 2011 (Elliot) And the cupcake breaks again! Heater filament went high-resistance. Replaced with John's cemented barrel heater (Thanks LJ) and it works just fine. Ran a 50 min print on it with no issues.

* July 19, 2011 (Elliot) The cupcake rides again! I cleaned out the barrel and re-wrapped the nichrome barrel heater. Using a 100k thermistor from John Yang straightened all of the temperature control problems out. We're back in bees-wax! Printed a groovy hollow pyramid to celebrate (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:8757).

* June 12, 2011 (Elliot) I gave up on the experimental hot end because it doesn't seem to transfer heat into the barrel fast enough with the result that it was very very hard to push filament through. I found some nichrome wire (7 ohms worth) and re-wrapped the barrel in the old style. Grrr... So it wasn't the fault of the experimental heater core. Even though it's wrapped in nichrome as originally, the hot end is still exhibiting the same failure -- extrudes around 2cm then stalls, stripping the teeth. In the process, I managed to fook up the teflon insulator -- time to order a new one. Might just scrounge the entire (working) head off the reprap in the interim. This one probably needs a thorough reaming and cleaning out before it'll run again.

* June 11, 2011 (Elliot) R. Mark Adams dropped a high-temp thermistor by the space, so I'm working on the hot end again. I set up the extruder thermistor for 10K resistance, and the rest looked good (beta = 4450, base = 25). Tested with a cup of hot water at 83 C and it read spot on. I declare it calibrated. (Also changed platform thermistor to 10K.) On first warm-up, it looks like the new heater will work, but the PID coefficients are horribly wrong and it's overshooting the set temperature by quite a lot. Tweaked a little bit, ended up with P=8, I=0.1, D=12. Not perfect, but not patient enough to tune further ATM.

* May 30, 2011 (Elliot) OK, so I re-flashed the firmware on both the extruder (firmware 2.4) and the motherboard (firmware 2.3). If someone wants to order a new thermistor for the hot end, that'd be swell. In the process of updating the firmware, we lost the thermistor calibration for the HBP, so it'll need re-calibrating (it's 110 C is only warm to the touch). Not sure that the all-aluminum hot end heater is getting hot enough -- there was much resistance when I tried to run filament through it. It'll probably need re-jiggering.

* May 29, 2011 (Elliot) Busted even worse now, and I'm in Germany until June 8th. Sorry y'all. The symptoms: The heater core works, but is slow. The replacement thermistors I ordered were low-temp and burned out, so there's no temp feedback. (I've stuck one into the thermistor input directly, you can verify that it reads temperature nearly-correctly. It will fail at 150 degrees, though.) The motor control seems to be not responding, as do the heated platform and nozzle heaters. Is there something wrong in the 12v power section of the board? Are _all_ the FETs burned out? I've double-checked the wiring, but if someone else would go over it, that'd be swell. Extruder motor works when plugged into external 12v. Extruder hot-end is only on finger-tight. If you get it working enough, tighten it back down before use.

* May 23, 2011 (Elliot) Well, the bot is slightly hosed now. I was printing out a bit for a visitor as a demo (figures!) and the heater gave up the ghost -- some of the nichrome wire fatigued and broke. I decided the necessary hot-end rebuild would be a good opportunity to machine out an aluminum cylinder, cut out alu shims to wedge three suitable power resistors inside, and use that as a barrel heater. It works, but takes ten minutes or so to heat up. And then the thermistor we've been using died (open-circuit) leaving the temp sensor always reading 255 degrees C. So now we've got an experimental (slightly slow) heater design with no temperature feedback. Sub-optimal. This will not stand! Stay tuned. [[Image:cupcake_heater0.jpg|100px]] [[Image:cupcake_heater1.jpg|100px]]

* May 16, 2011 (Elliot) OK, so nobody has been writing stuff down in the log. Booo!! I re-levelled the bed last night. Should be good for printing raftless now. I'm working on a no-tweak-necessary profile for a recent skeinforge that'll allow raftless printing. I think we'll need a z-minimum endstop to make that work.

* Mid April, 2011 (Elliot) Printed out wheels, gears, a carriage, and a bowing arm for Alberto and my art project "Carrier". On display at the Artisphere until June 18th. I'll have to do a thorough writeup.

* March 20, 2011 (Will G) Printed a bottle opener. Had to back the blue filament out and refeed it, since it stopped feeding after 20 seconds. After clipping and refeeding the filament, the makerbot happily printed my bottle opener.

* Feb 20, 2011 (Elliot) Saw that the bearing that holds the motor gear in place was slipping out (for the last time!). Measured the diameter of the hole, SCADed up a part, printed it up, and acetoned it in place. Now the bearing is (forever?) captive.

* Feb 3, 2011 (Elliot) Came in to find a relay attached to the extruder head motor. Removed it (because I do PWM) and discovered why it was there -- the motor was stopping intermittently. After replacing the power cable and a few other things, I finally scavenged the (new) motor off of the RepRap, and that did the trick. Printed a few piezo-disc holders for an art piece.

* Jan 30, 2011 (Elliot) Found out what was wrong with the extruder head (just after Xaq left, as usual) which was that the bearing that holds the motor spindle in place had worked out, so that the motor was no longer held tight against the sprung pulley wheel bearing. Unscrewed the motor from the mount, pushed the bearing back in, and it's working again. Next time the extruder head is off, we should probably epoxy the bearing in or something. Printed out a new [http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:975 Z-crank] and then got to work on Xaq's Mendel X-end-motor piece. This was quite hard to get it working with raftless. The tricks: slow the first layer speed down to 0.7 on the infill, 0.45 on the perimeter, and 0.9 for the flow-rate multiplier to keep it from getting too gunky. I also started the prints off with the head a lot closer to the platform than normal. This seemed to squish it down hard, while not putting down so much plastic that it got the hairy over-extrusion condition, which then catches the head on the next pass. It's hard to quantify all this -- we should get a z-axis end-stop installed to establish a reference point.

* Jan 27th, 2011 (Xaq) After a couple weeks of basically flawless printing, the extruder motor seems to be giving up. I saw this today and on Tuesday when Pete was printing a Wade's: after a little over an hour, the extruder motor just stops. After the failure, attempting to control extrusion through the control panel also fails. Pete fixed it on Tuesday by toggling to motor back and forth (I think), but I am not sure how he did that so I am giving up for today. These motors are notorious in the reprap-blogosphere for suckiness, it may be time for a geared stepper....

* Jan 11th, 2011 (Xaq, Peter (?), Elliot) Peter (?) was printing out Mendel parts in three (?) five-hour batches and during a four-hour print, the machine failed. It looks like the barrel clogged up somehow and the resistance messed up the feed section. Specifically, the [http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1004 retaining ring] was all bent and the motor shaft had come out of its bearing. Xaq broke the hot-end down and cleaned it all out, and we re-assembled the head. We already had a retaining ring printed out from before (it's a common superstition to have an extra on hand, and now I see why) so it was just a question of assembly. We noticed that the printed retaining ring design isn't quite centered on the dimple in the [http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4036 brutstruder]. A little work with a file makes it fit right. We then printed out another replacement retaining ring for next time and tossed it in the reprap box.

* Jan 3, 2011 (Elliot, John) Printed out a bunch of cool, small objects for people to see. Then printed out a [http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3780 bolt-hobbing tool attachment] for the lathe b/c John wanted a [http://www.thingiverse.com/image:20063 hobbed bolt] for his Mendel. Then we hobbed it on the lathe and it was rad. The hobbing tool now sits in the reprap box, waiting expectantly for you to use it.

* Dec 30th, 2010 (Will.) Printed out a test cube with the new machines.xml file. Printed some tiny, flat whistles. Found out that whistles are hard to print.

* Dec 27, 2010. (John, Elliot) swapped out the makerbot standard 1/2 microstepping stepper controllers for a 4-axis board using pololu controllers in 1/16 configuration. The bot is much quieter with the 1/16 microstepping. You will have to '''update your machines.xml''' ([[Makerbot machines.xml]]) to use the new 1/16 configuration.

* Dec 20, 2010. (Will.) Printer a bunch of snowflakes for the holiday party. Experimented with raftless printing. Taught Eric how to use the makerbot.

* Dec 20, 2010. (Eric.) Found Will and makerbot in working condition. Printed pretty birthday snowflakes. [[Image: makerbot_snowflakes.jpg|100px]]

* Dec 19, 2010. (Will.) Found makerbot in working condition. Fired up makerbot and extruded some goo for a few minutes, had no problems. Printed a large object, makerbot ran without encountering any problems.

* Dec 17, 2010. (Elliot, Will, Speek.) Replaced the stock v4 extruder head with a self-printed Brutstruder: [[Image: brutstruder_cupcake.jpg|100 px]] Elliot printed some multicolour items for his nieces for Xmas, changing the filament a bunch of times with no problems. Has the brutstruder fixed our filament feed woes?!?!? Stay tuned....

* Dec 10-Dec 15, 2010. (Elliot, Xaq) Much frustration. On-and-off printing, seemingly due to the extruder head not carrying enough force. Got it working with the (wider, more round) white filament, but still having troubles with the (smaller, slightly-oval) black filament. One night when it was working, probably the 13th, Xaq and Nick made up a model for a replacement joystick part. [[Image:cupcake_joystick.jpg|100px]]

* Dec 8, 2010. (Xaq and Elliot.) We spent a few hours trying to figure out why the feed wasn't feeding. It would go for a few minutes then stall -- white filament or black filament. Xaq was thinking it was a rotation thing, and we noticed that the drive wheel wants to twist the feedstock around in a circle, putting a twist in it. Elliot noticed a ton of back-pressure from the hot end, and wonders if that's not to blame.

* Dec 3, 2010. (Elliot.) Printed out a [http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1842 bottle opener] and it worked just perfectly. Noticed that the feed had a kink in it, and clipped and re-fed it. It didn't print sucessfully since. Tried to print the [http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1046 whistle] a few times with no joy. It would stop feeing a few layers into the print. There's something to do with a twist in the feed? Or it the feed slightly oval-shaped and slipping? Fed the makerbot the white ABS feed, which is slightly thicker, and it printed flawlessly. Hmmm...

* Nov 29, 2010. (Elliot and Xaq.) While Xaq was in the space, we both spent about 2 hours of frustratingly abortive 2-minute prints, attempts at raftlessly printing a [http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:49 coathook]. Shortly after Xaq left, Elliot printed a coathook with a raft and it worked well enough (with babying on the feed at points). Elliot then printed [http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1912 dino-2s for the brutstruder] without rafts with only one flaw in the first of five prints. I'm at a loss for what changed: it got later at night, and the machine had been in continuous use for longer. I wonder if the bot needs much longer to warm up than we thought? Anyway, before printing something raftless, I would try printing a rafted small object first as a sacrifice to the makerbot gods (or at least to verify that the machine is working) because that seems to be a lot less tweaky.

* Nov 27, 2010. (Elliot.) Printed small odds and ends, just to watch it go. Looks great. The new spool which Dan B and I built seems to work fine, and certainly won't tangle. Moved it to its own (partly mobile) table. I've been working on raftless settings, and it's looking great. Printed a few of the heater-retainer collars for later in case we need them, and tossed them in the reprap box. It's about 5 hours of printing time since the rebuild and it's behaving flawlessly. Will this continue? Knock on wood.

* Nov 26, 2010. (Elliot.) Having broken the hot end of the extruder, I needed to fix it. Took it completely apart and soaked all the parts in acetone, getting all the melted plastic off. I reinstalled things as per the makerbot instructions, with the exception of using teflon tape to (electrically) insulate the barrel from the nichrome wire, because its original sheathing had come off during removal. Noticed that the brass barrel was installed upside-down, so I fixed that. The nozzle seems to be flowing a lot now -- so much that I had to reconfigure skeinforge to deal with the extra plastic. We'll see if it holds up. Printed out a [http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4036 brutstruder] and the plastic axles for the new feed spool.

* Nov 24, 2010. (Elliot and Will G.) Still having problems with intermittent extruder stoppage. Will and Elliot removed the hot end and cleaned it out. That wasn't the problem. Elliot noticed that the idler wheel was binding, fixed that. Still not the problem, though it has sufficient strength to push through whatever is giving the high back-pressure. Elliot started to re-do the hot end again, and probably messed up the heater in the process. Hopefully it's just a loose wire, but the insulation and heating element may need to be re-worked. Sucks....

* Nov 20, 2010. (Elliot and Tommy) Noticed that gear motor was out of line. Tommy and I added a bearing to it. Extruder still just randomly stops extruding after 15 minutes or so.

* Nov 18, 2010. (Elliot) Printed out some widgets. Extruder head stopped extruding halfway through a print, turned out to be due to ABS bits fouling up the pushing-gear teeth. Also had some troubles with adhesion of the raft to platform.

[[Category:Makerbot]]
[[Category:Printing]]

AVR Microcontroller Class

2011-07-20T21:54:21Z

Hexagon5un:

We've had two rounds of the AVR Microcontroller class at HacDC so far.

* If you're looking to learn, see the 2011 class. [[AVR Microcontroller Class 2011]] (happened in Feb/March 2011)

* If you're looking for specific old materials, we're keeping that online too! [[AVR Microcontroller Class 2009]] (the first version)

Makerbot Operators Log

2011-07-20T02:39:56Z

Hexagon5un: /* When you use the Cupcake, please add notes here. Newest at top. */

==== When you use the Cupcake, please add notes here. Newest at top. ====

* July 19, 2011 (Elliot) The cupcake rides again! I cleaned out the barrel and re-wrapped the nichrome barrel heater. Using a 100k thermistor from John Yang straightened all of the temperature control problems out. We're back in bees-wax! Printed a groovy hollow pyramid to celebrate (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:8757).

* June 12, 2011 (Elliot) I gave up on the experimental hot end because it doesn't seem to transfer heat into the barrel fast enough with the result that it was very very hard to push filament through. I found some nichrome wire (7 ohms worth) and re-wrapped the barrel in the old style. Grrr... So it wasn't the fault of the experimental heater core. Even though it's wrapped in nichrome as originally, the hot end is still exhibiting the same failure -- extrudes around 2cm then stalls, stripping the teeth. In the process, I managed to fook up the teflon insulator -- time to order a new one. Might just scrounge the entire (working) head off the reprap in the interim. This one probably needs a thorough reaming and cleaning out before it'll run again.

* June 11, 2011 (Elliot) R. Mark Adams dropped a high-temp thermistor by the space, so I'm working on the hot end again. I set up the extruder thermistor for 10K resistance, and the rest looked good (beta = 4450, base = 25). Tested with a cup of hot water at 83 C and it read spot on. I declare it calibrated. (Also changed platform thermistor to 10K.) On first warm-up, it looks like the new heater will work, but the PID coefficients are horribly wrong and it's overshooting the set temperature by quite a lot. Tweaked a little bit, ended up with P=8, I=0.1, D=12. Not perfect, but not patient enough to tune further ATM.

* May 30, 2011 (Elliot) OK, so I re-flashed the firmware on both the extruder (firmware 2.4) and the motherboard (firmware 2.3). If someone wants to order a new thermistor for the hot end, that'd be swell. In the process of updating the firmware, we lost the thermistor calibration for the HBP, so it'll need re-calibrating (it's 110 C is only warm to the touch). Not sure that the all-aluminum hot end heater is getting hot enough -- there was much resistance when I tried to run filament through it. It'll probably need re-jiggering.

* May 29, 2011 (Elliot) Busted even worse now, and I'm in Germany until June 8th. Sorry y'all. The symptoms: The heater core works, but is slow. The replacement thermistors I ordered were low-temp and burned out, so there's no temp feedback. (I've stuck one into the thermistor input directly, you can verify that it reads temperature nearly-correctly. It will fail at 150 degrees, though.) The motor control seems to be not responding, as do the heated platform and nozzle heaters. Is there something wrong in the 12v power section of the board? Are _all_ the FETs burned out? I've double-checked the wiring, but if someone else would go over it, that'd be swell. Extruder motor works when plugged into external 12v. Extruder hot-end is only on finger-tight. If you get it working enough, tighten it back down before use.

* May 23, 2011 (Elliot) Well, the bot is slightly hosed now. I was printing out a bit for a visitor as a demo (figures!) and the heater gave up the ghost -- some of the nichrome wire fatigued and broke. I decided the necessary hot-end rebuild would be a good opportunity to machine out an aluminum cylinder, cut out alu shims to wedge three suitable power resistors inside, and use that as a barrel heater. It works, but takes ten minutes or so to heat up. And then the thermistor we've been using died (open-circuit) leaving the temp sensor always reading 255 degrees C. So now we've got an experimental (slightly slow) heater design with no temperature feedback. Sub-optimal. This will not stand! Stay tuned. [[Image:cupcake_heater0.jpg|100px]] [[Image:cupcake_heater1.jpg|100px]]

* May 16, 2011 (Elliot) OK, so nobody has been writing stuff down in the log. Booo!! I re-levelled the bed last night. Should be good for printing raftless now. I'm working on a no-tweak-necessary profile for a recent skeinforge that'll allow raftless printing. I think we'll need a z-minimum endstop to make that work.

* Mid April, 2011 (Elliot) Printed out wheels, gears, a carriage, and a bowing arm for Alberto and my art project "Carrier". On display at the Artisphere until June 18th. I'll have to do a thorough writeup.

* March 20, 2011 (Will G) Printed a bottle opener. Had to back the blue filament out and refeed it, since it stopped feeding after 20 seconds. After clipping and refeeding the filament, the makerbot happily printed my bottle opener.

* Feb 20, 2011 (Elliot) Saw that the bearing that holds the motor gear in place was slipping out (for the last time!). Measured the diameter of the hole, SCADed up a part, printed it up, and acetoned it in place. Now the bearing is (forever?) captive.

* Feb 3, 2011 (Elliot) Came in to find a relay attached to the extruder head motor. Removed it (because I do PWM) and discovered why it was there -- the motor was stopping intermittently. After replacing the power cable and a few other things, I finally scavenged the (new) motor off of the RepRap, and that did the trick. Printed a few piezo-disc holders for an art piece.

* Jan 30, 2011 (Elliot) Found out what was wrong with the extruder head (just after Xaq left, as usual) which was that the bearing that holds the motor spindle in place had worked out, so that the motor was no longer held tight against the sprung pulley wheel bearing. Unscrewed the motor from the mount, pushed the bearing back in, and it's working again. Next time the extruder head is off, we should probably epoxy the bearing in or something. Printed out a new [http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:975 Z-crank] and then got to work on Xaq's Mendel X-end-motor piece. This was quite hard to get it working with raftless. The tricks: slow the first layer speed down to 0.7 on the infill, 0.45 on the perimeter, and 0.9 for the flow-rate multiplier to keep it from getting too gunky. I also started the prints off with the head a lot closer to the platform than normal. This seemed to squish it down hard, while not putting down so much plastic that it got the hairy over-extrusion condition, which then catches the head on the next pass. It's hard to quantify all this -- we should get a z-axis end-stop installed to establish a reference point.

* Jan 27th, 2011 (Xaq) After a couple weeks of basically flawless printing, the extruder motor seems to be giving up. I saw this today and on Tuesday when Pete was printing a Wade's: after a little over an hour, the extruder motor just stops. After the failure, attempting to control extrusion through the control panel also fails. Pete fixed it on Tuesday by toggling to motor back and forth (I think), but I am not sure how he did that so I am giving up for today. These motors are notorious in the reprap-blogosphere for suckiness, it may be time for a geared stepper....

* Jan 11th, 2011 (Xaq, Peter (?), Elliot) Peter (?) was printing out Mendel parts in three (?) five-hour batches and during a four-hour print, the machine failed. It looks like the barrel clogged up somehow and the resistance messed up the feed section. Specifically, the [http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1004 retaining ring] was all bent and the motor shaft had come out of its bearing. Xaq broke the hot-end down and cleaned it all out, and we re-assembled the head. We already had a retaining ring printed out from before (it's a common superstition to have an extra on hand, and now I see why) so it was just a question of assembly. We noticed that the printed retaining ring design isn't quite centered on the dimple in the [http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4036 brutstruder]. A little work with a file makes it fit right. We then printed out another replacement retaining ring for next time and tossed it in the reprap box.

* Jan 3, 2011 (Elliot, John) Printed out a bunch of cool, small objects for people to see. Then printed out a [http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3780 bolt-hobbing tool attachment] for the lathe b/c John wanted a [http://www.thingiverse.com/image:20063 hobbed bolt] for his Mendel. Then we hobbed it on the lathe and it was rad. The hobbing tool now sits in the reprap box, waiting expectantly for you to use it.

* Dec 30th, 2010 (Will.) Printed out a test cube with the new machines.xml file. Printed some tiny, flat whistles. Found out that whistles are hard to print.

* Dec 27, 2010. (John, Elliot) swapped out the makerbot standard 1/2 microstepping stepper controllers for a 4-axis board using pololu controllers in 1/16 configuration. The bot is much quieter with the 1/16 microstepping. You will have to '''update your machines.xml''' ([[Makerbot machines.xml]]) to use the new 1/16 configuration.

* Dec 20, 2010. (Will.) Printer a bunch of snowflakes for the holiday party. Experimented with raftless printing. Taught Eric how to use the makerbot.

* Dec 20, 2010. (Eric.) Found Will and makerbot in working condition. Printed pretty birthday snowflakes. [[Image: makerbot_snowflakes.jpg|100px]]

* Dec 19, 2010. (Will.) Found makerbot in working condition. Fired up makerbot and extruded some goo for a few minutes, had no problems. Printed a large object, makerbot ran without encountering any problems.

* Dec 17, 2010. (Elliot, Will, Speek.) Replaced the stock v4 extruder head with a self-printed Brutstruder: [[Image: brutstruder_cupcake.jpg|100 px]] Elliot printed some multicolour items for his nieces for Xmas, changing the filament a bunch of times with no problems. Has the brutstruder fixed our filament feed woes?!?!? Stay tuned....

* Dec 10-Dec 15, 2010. (Elliot, Xaq) Much frustration. On-and-off printing, seemingly due to the extruder head not carrying enough force. Got it working with the (wider, more round) white filament, but still having troubles with the (smaller, slightly-oval) black filament. One night when it was working, probably the 13th, Xaq and Nick made up a model for a replacement joystick part. [[Image:cupcake_joystick.jpg|100px]]

* Dec 8, 2010. (Xaq and Elliot.) We spent a few hours trying to figure out why the feed wasn't feeding. It would go for a few minutes then stall -- white filament or black filament. Xaq was thinking it was a rotation thing, and we noticed that the drive wheel wants to twist the feedstock around in a circle, putting a twist in it. Elliot noticed a ton of back-pressure from the hot end, and wonders if that's not to blame.

* Dec 3, 2010. (Elliot.) Printed out a [http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1842 bottle opener] and it worked just perfectly. Noticed that the feed had a kink in it, and clipped and re-fed it. It didn't print sucessfully since. Tried to print the [http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1046 whistle] a few times with no joy. It would stop feeing a few layers into the print. There's something to do with a twist in the feed? Or it the feed slightly oval-shaped and slipping? Fed the makerbot the white ABS feed, which is slightly thicker, and it printed flawlessly. Hmmm...

* Nov 29, 2010. (Elliot and Xaq.) While Xaq was in the space, we both spent about 2 hours of frustratingly abortive 2-minute prints, attempts at raftlessly printing a [http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:49 coathook]. Shortly after Xaq left, Elliot printed a coathook with a raft and it worked well enough (with babying on the feed at points). Elliot then printed [http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1912 dino-2s for the brutstruder] without rafts with only one flaw in the first of five prints. I'm at a loss for what changed: it got later at night, and the machine had been in continuous use for longer. I wonder if the bot needs much longer to warm up than we thought? Anyway, before printing something raftless, I would try printing a rafted small object first as a sacrifice to the makerbot gods (or at least to verify that the machine is working) because that seems to be a lot less tweaky.

* Nov 27, 2010. (Elliot.) Printed small odds and ends, just to watch it go. Looks great. The new spool which Dan B and I built seems to work fine, and certainly won't tangle. Moved it to its own (partly mobile) table. I've been working on raftless settings, and it's looking great. Printed a few of the heater-retainer collars for later in case we need them, and tossed them in the reprap box. It's about 5 hours of printing time since the rebuild and it's behaving flawlessly. Will this continue? Knock on wood.

* Nov 26, 2010. (Elliot.) Having broken the hot end of the extruder, I needed to fix it. Took it completely apart and soaked all the parts in acetone, getting all the melted plastic off. I reinstalled things as per the makerbot instructions, with the exception of using teflon tape to (electrically) insulate the barrel from the nichrome wire, because its original sheathing had come off during removal. Noticed that the brass barrel was installed upside-down, so I fixed that. The nozzle seems to be flowing a lot now -- so much that I had to reconfigure skeinforge to deal with the extra plastic. We'll see if it holds up. Printed out a [http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4036 brutstruder] and the plastic axles for the new feed spool.

* Nov 24, 2010. (Elliot and Will G.) Still having problems with intermittent extruder stoppage. Will and Elliot removed the hot end and cleaned it out. That wasn't the problem. Elliot noticed that the idler wheel was binding, fixed that. Still not the problem, though it has sufficient strength to push through whatever is giving the high back-pressure. Elliot started to re-do the hot end again, and probably messed up the heater in the process. Hopefully it's just a loose wire, but the insulation and heating element may need to be re-worked. Sucks....

* Nov 20, 2010. (Elliot and Tommy) Noticed that gear motor was out of line. Tommy and I added a bearing to it. Extruder still just randomly stops extruding after 15 minutes or so.

* Nov 18, 2010. (Elliot) Printed out some widgets. Extruder head stopped extruding halfway through a print, turned out to be due to ABS bits fouling up the pushing-gear teeth. Also had some troubles with adhesion of the raft to platform.

[[Category:Makerbot]]
[[Category:Printing]]

Regular Member Meeting 2011 07 12

2011-07-13T05:09:32Z

Hexagon5un: /* Adjournment */

'''Note:''' This page serves as the 2011-07-12 Member Meeting's agenda (before the meeting) and minutes (after the meeting).

== Time and Location ==
July 12, 2011

Meeting called to order at _7:40_ by: Elliot

Members Present:

Elliot
Toast
Eric
Phil
Will
Brad
Martin
Dan
John
Bjorn
Tim

Others Present:
Greg

[[Quorum]] met?
yes.

== Approval of Previous Meeting's Minutes ==
[[Regular Member Meeting 2011 06 14]]

== Director Reports ==

=== President's Report ===

=== Vice President's Report ===

Nothing.

=== Treasurer's Report (Tim Slagle) ===

I have tracked down all the account info I needed but am still looking for some receipts. I downloaded all the 2011 financial info from BB&T and PayPal. Made a 2011 financial spreadsheet (Google Doc) which has member dues and donation payments, and a financial summary for each month. Here is the financial summary: [[file:HacDC_Financials_June_2011.pdf]]

We are basically breaking even due to the increased member donations and a non-trivial amount of donations from the robotics class ($200). It would be good to increase revenues even more so that we can start building the reserve back up and fund some projects again! We ended June 2011 with a reserve of about 2.5 months expenses.

In June, we had 43 paying members, one non-paying member, added no new members, and lost one (Sahar Goldin, who joined on 4/12).

I plan to cancel our monthly Quicken Online account ($10.55/mo) as soon as I'm sure my spreadsheets capture enough info to do the annual report.

=== Secretary's Report ===

=== Director-at-Large Reports ===

==== Toast ====

* Clit-fest workshop, zine workshop didn't want to hold workshops here b/c not handicap accessible

* Zine fest drew about 10 people

==== Brad B ====

* USA.gov asked to share about their data visualization for bit.ly hackathon, July 29. (Passed up our venue b/c of our internet connection.)

== Member Reports ==

* Absent member [[user:katie|Katie]] says hi from Japan, and congrats on the latest spaceblimp launch!

* Martin discussed Spaceblimp 5. Awesome, easy recovery, fun. 16th highest amateur balloon. New HacDC stickers have been re-ordered.

* Bjorn talked about Elizabeth's Max/MSP workshop. There will be more events, with the aim of bringing a bunch of music types. Processing workshops on the horizon?

* Dan broke down and ordered a bunch of broken video projectors -- has 20W LEDs. Talk to him if you're interested in playing around with one. Also has 3x100W LEDs ordered.

* Elliot talked about repairing all the 3D printers, building up the Prusa. We should probably step up and commit to a weekend build and get it hammered in an afternoon. We also have taken responsibility not only for running the wiring on the church intercom, but also sourcing the components. That project is currently in limbo.

* Pete replaced the belt on the drill press

== Old Business ==

== New Business ==

== New Members ==

== Adjournment ==

Adjourned at: 8:40 pm

[[Category:Meeting_Agendas]]
[[Category:Meeting_Minutes]]

Regular Member Meeting 2011 07 12

2011-07-13T00:26:57Z

Hexagon5un: /* Member Reports */

'''Note:''' This page serves as the 2011-07-12 Member Meeting's agenda (before the meeting) and minutes (after the meeting).

== Time and Location ==
July 12, 2011

Meeting called to order at _7:40_ by: Elliot

Members Present:

Elliot
Toast
Eric
Phil
Will
Brad
Martin
Dan
John
Bjorn
Tim

Others Present:
Greg

[[Quorum]] met?
yes.

== Approval of Previous Meeting's Minutes ==
[[Regular Member Meeting 2011 06 14]]

== Director Reports ==

=== President's Report ===

=== Vice President's Report ===

Nothing.

=== Treasurer's Report (Tim Slagle) ===

I have tracked down all the account info I needed but am still looking for some receipts. I downloaded all the 2011 financial info from BB&T and PayPal. Made a 2011 financial spreadsheet (Google Doc) which has member dues and donation payments, and a financial summary for each month. Here is the financial summary: [[file:HacDC_Financials_June_2011.pdf]]

We are basically breaking even due to the increased member donations and a non-trivial amount of donations from the robotics class ($200). It would be good to increase revenues even more so that we can start building the reserve back up and fund some projects again! We ended June 2011 with a reserve of about 2.5 months expenses.

In June, we had 43 paying members, one non-paying member, added no new members, and lost one (Sahar Goldin, who joined on 4/12).

I plan to cancel our monthly Quicken Online account ($10.55/mo) as soon as I'm sure my spreadsheets capture enough info to do the annual report.

=== Secretary's Report ===

=== Director-at-Large Reports ===

==== Toast ====

* Clit-fest workshop, zine workshop didn't want to hold workshops here b/c not handicap accessible

* Zine fest drew about 10 people

==== Brad B ====

* USA.gov asked to share about their data visualization for bit.ly hackathon, July 29. (Passed up our venue b/c of our internet connection.)

== Member Reports ==

* Absent member [[user:katie|Katie]] says hi from Japan, and congrats on the latest spaceblimp launch!

* Martin discussed Spaceblimp 5. Awesome, easy recovery, fun. 16th highest amateur balloon. New HacDC stickers have been re-ordered.

* Bjorn talked about Elizabeth's Max/MSP workshop. There will be more events, with the aim of bringing a bunch of music types. Processing workshops on the horizon?

* Dan broke down and ordered a bunch of broken video projectors -- has 20W LEDs. Talk to him if you're interested in playing around with one. Also has 3x100W LEDs ordered.

* Elliot talked about repairing all the 3D printers, building up the Prusa. We should probably step up and commit to a weekend build and get it hammered in an afternoon. We also have taken responsibility not only for running the wiring on the church intercom, but also sourcing the components. That project is currently in limbo.

* Pete replaced the belt on the drill press

== Old Business ==

== New Business ==

== New Members ==

== Adjournment ==

Adjourned at:

[[Category:Meeting_Agendas]]
[[Category:Meeting_Minutes]]

Regular Member Meeting 2011 07 12

2011-07-13T00:11:06Z

Hexagon5un: /* Member Reports */

'''Note:''' This page serves as the 2011-07-12 Member Meeting's agenda (before the meeting) and minutes (after the meeting).

== Time and Location ==
July 12, 2011

Meeting called to order at _7:40_ by: Elliot

Members Present:

Elliot
Toast
Eric
Phil
Will
Brad
Martin
Dan
John
Bjorn
Tim

Others Present:
Greg

[[Quorum]] met?
yes.

== Approval of Previous Meeting's Minutes ==
[[Regular Member Meeting 2011 06 14]]

== Director Reports ==

=== President's Report ===

=== Vice President's Report ===

Nothing.

=== Treasurer's Report (Tim Slagle) ===

I have tracked down all the account info I needed but am still looking for some receipts. I downloaded all the 2011 financial info from BB&T and PayPal. Made a 2011 financial spreadsheet (Google Doc) which has member dues and donation payments, and a financial summary for each month. Here is the financial summary: [[file:HacDC_Financials_June_2011.pdf]]

We are basically breaking even due to the increased member donations and a non-trivial amount of donations from the robotics class ($200). It would be good to increase revenues even more so that we can start building the reserve back up and fund some projects again! We ended June 2011 with a reserve of about 2.5 months expenses.

In June, we had 43 paying members, one non-paying member, added no new members, and lost one (Sahar Goldin, who joined on 4/12).

I plan to cancel our monthly Quicken Online account ($10.55/mo) as soon as I'm sure my spreadsheets capture enough info to do the annual report.

=== Secretary's Report ===

=== Director-at-Large Reports ===

==== Toast ====

* Clit-fest workshop, zine workshop didn't want to hold workshops here b/c not handicap accessible

* Zine fest drew about 10 people

==== Brad B ====

* USA.gov asked to share about their data visualization for bit.ly hackathon, July 29. (Passed up our venue b/c of our internet connection.)

== Member Reports ==

* Absent member [[user:katie|Katie]] says hi from Japan, and congrats on the latest spaceblimp launch!

* Martin discussed Spaceblimp 5. Awesome, easy recovery, fun. 16th highest amateur balloon. New HacDC stickers have been re-ordered.

* Bjorn talked about Elizabeth's Max/MSP workshop. There will be more events, with the aim of bringing a bunch of music types. Processing workshops on the horizon?

* Dan broke down and ordered a bunch of broken video projectors -- has 20W LEDs. Talk to him if you're interested in playing around with one. Also has 3x100W LEDs ordered.

* Elliot talked about repairing all the 3D printers, building up the Prusa. We should probably step up and commit to a weekend build and get it hammered in an afternoon.

* Pete replaced the belt on the drill press

== Old Business ==

== New Business ==

== New Members ==

== Adjournment ==

Adjourned at:

[[Category:Meeting_Agendas]]
[[Category:Meeting_Minutes]]

Regular Member Meeting 2011 07 12

2011-07-12T23:55:27Z

Hexagon5un: /* Brad B */

'''Note:''' This page serves as the 2011-07-12 Member Meeting's agenda (before the meeting) and minutes (after the meeting).

== Time and Location ==
July 12, 2011

Meeting called to order at _7:40_ by: Elliot

Members Present:

Elliot
Toast
Eric
Phil
Will
Brad
Martin
Dan
John
Bjorn
Tim

Others Present:
Greg

[[Quorum]] met?
yes.

== Approval of Previous Meeting's Minutes ==
[[Regular Member Meeting 2011 06 14]]

== Director Reports ==

=== President's Report ===

=== Vice President's Report ===

Nothing.

=== Treasurer's Report (Tim Slagle) ===

I have tracked down all the account info I needed but am still looking for some receipts. I downloaded all the 2011 financial info from BB&T and PayPal. Made a 2011 financial spreadsheet (Google Doc) which has member dues and donation payments, and a financial summary for each month. Here is the financial summary: [[file:HacDC_Financials_June_2011.pdf]]

We are basically breaking even due to the increased member donations and a non-trivial amount of donations from the robotics class ($200). It would be good to increase revenues even more so that we can start building the reserve back up and fund some projects again! We ended June 2011 with a reserve of about 2.5 months expenses.

In June, we had 43 paying members, one non-paying member, added no new members, and lost one (Sahar Goldin, who joined on 4/12).

I plan to cancel our monthly Quicken Online account ($10.55/mo) as soon as I'm sure my spreadsheets capture enough info to do the annual report.

=== Secretary's Report ===

=== Director-at-Large Reports ===

==== Toast ====

* Clit-fest workshop, zine workshop didn't want to hold workshops here b/c not handicap accessible

* Zine fest drew about 10 people

==== Brad B ====

* USA.gov asked to share about their data visualization for bit.ly hackathon, July 29. (Passed up our venue b/c of our internet connection.)

== Member Reports ==

* Absent member [[user:katie|Katie]] says hi from Japan, and congrats on the latest spaceblimp launch!

== Old Business ==

== New Business ==

== New Members ==

== Adjournment ==

Adjourned at:

[[Category:Meeting_Agendas]]
[[Category:Meeting_Minutes]]

Regular Member Meeting 2011 07 12

2011-07-12T23:53:53Z

Hexagon5un: /* Toast */

Regular Member Meeting 2011 07 12

2011-07-12T23:46:00Z

Hexagon5un: /* Vice President's Report */

Regular Member Meeting 2011 06 14

2011-07-12T23:44:58Z

Hexagon5un: /* New Members */

'''Note:''' This page serves as the 2011-06-14 Member Meeting's agenda (before the meeting) and minutes (after the meeting).

== Time and Location ==
June 14, 2011

Meeting called to order at _7:30_ by _Elliot_.

Members Present: Elliot, Jamie, Phil, Martin, Brad, Ruben, Toast, Tim, Xaq, Ben, Chris

Others Present:

[[Quorum]] met? Yes

== Approval of Previous Meeting's Minutes ==
[[Regular Member Meeting 2011 05 10]]
Approved.

== Director Reports ==

=== President's Report ===
Absent.

=== Vice President's Report ===

* I signed a new lease for the same rent as before ($2,526). It turns out that we are already getting use of the basement space for free, in exchange for our maintaining the church ethernet, and the square-footage price is exactly in-line with the rest of the tenants in the church. I.e. there was no good bargaining room.

* What we _did_ agree to was to help the church install a new intercom system on our floor for $2000. We need to meet some weekend (probably) to run some cables through the ceiling tile and hook up intercoms in all the offices on the floor. The church was going to pay a contractor for this, and Brian thought it'd be a great way to hook HacDC up with some money for a Saturday's work. We'll need a bunch of willing volunteers.

* TC isn't able to continue on as Treasurer due to a whole bunch of family obligations. I currently have the books and the checkbook, and I've paid our rent. If I get some time, I'll look at our financials and sent out a quasi-Treasurer's report in a bit.

* Rock on!

=== Treasurer's Report (Vacant) ===

=== Secretary's Report ===
Byzantium has been getting some attention, people are starting to see the need for cheap and reliable mesh networking.
Still more work to be done, people are interested but we need a working mailing list.

TECS is done for now.

=== Director-at-Large Reports ===

==== -Vacant- ====

==== Brad B ====
Brad & Reuben have been teaching Python. Great class!

Haven't made much progress with realtors. We already have a very good rate.

We're partnering with One.USA.gov and bit.ly to do a visualization hack-a-thon.

== Member Reports ==

=== Toast ===
Girl rock concert... 5 people showed up. (Blue and her friends.)

Zine-fest coming up in mid-July. (They're like paper blogs.) They would like to use our space for workshops.

Women punk-rock thing happening in early July. They would also like to do workshops in the space.

Running for Director at Large.

=== Xaq ===
Reprap is being built.

Discussion about a 3D printing class. Might actually happen this time.
Don't want to start until the RepRap is finished so we have more than one printer.

=== Elizabeth ===
Starting a Max MSP workshop. (real-time audio stuff)
Four workshops because it would be a trial version.

=== Chris ===
Reminder that Byzantium starts on the last Friday of every month. We keep having schedule collisions with other events.

=== Martin ===
Spaceblimp will fly before the end of August.
A bunch of grant possibilities available.

=== Will G. ===
DC-MAN has some opportunity for educational access.

== Old Business ==

== New Business ==

=== Special Election for Director-at-Large ===
Tim Slagle is running for Director-at-Large on the LASER platform (We need a laser cutter @ HacDC). -LASERS!!!!!!!! ......q:

Any other candidates???
Toast
Nom: Will G.
Second: Elliot
Elected!

=== Special Election for Treasurer ===

Any candidates???
Tim Slagle.
Nom: Elliot
Second: Will G.
Elected!

Do we still get a laser? Maybe.

== Friendly Visitors ==

=== Chad ===
From VA. Interested in woodworking.

=== Matt ===
New to DC. Found us on Meetup.com.
Also from VA. Software design.

== Adjournment ==

Adjourned at _8:10_

[[Category:Meeting_Agendas]]
[[Category:Meeting_Minutes]]

Regular Member Meeting 2011 07 12

2011-07-12T23:42:32Z

Hexagon5un: /* Time and Location */

HacDC Spaceblimp 5

2011-07-12T21:31:09Z

Hexagon5un: /* Summary */

[[Image: sb5_IMG_9220.JPG | 500 px]]

Spaceblimp-5 Launched: July 9, 2011

== Summary ==

This time we were going for altitude, and we got it! The max recorded altitude was 118,533 ft! (Getting us the 16th highest altitude record on [[http://arhab.org/ ARHAB.org]] !)

The launch site was: Strasburg VA, in a open area near the town on Rt 11, near the I-81.
Lat: 38.9968 N
Lon: 78.3508W

[[Image: sb5_launch_still.jpg | 320 px]] [[Image: sb5_track.jpg | 500 px]]

The path the balloon took was pretty strange, with the wind shifting between ascent and descent, and so we had a lot more driving to do than usual. The primary GPS/radio worked perfectly, and we got super-lucky with the recovery, picking up the package ~15 minutes after it hit the ground. The video camera overheated and failed before launch (booo!) and we're still working on the instrument data, but all signs point to some new and interesting results at the highest altitude we've ever run.

What challenges are left for the Spaceblimp project? Get involved: subscribe to [[http://hacdc.org/mailman/listinfo/spaceblimp the Spaceblimp mailing list]] and help us figure it out!

Visiting from another planet? [http://www.hacdc.org/about Here's more about us].

Want to help us do more awesome stuff? [http://www.hacdc.org/donate Make a tax deductible donation to our .org!]

== Pictures and Video ==

== Data ==

=== Accelerometer ===

For now, here is the raw accelerometer data: [[Media: spaceblimp5_accelerometer.csv.gz]]

Analysis to come in the next few days....

=== Flight Tracker ===

== Launch Plans ==
{| {{Prettytable|width=600px}}
!align="right"| Planned launch date:
| Saturday, July 9, 2011
|-
!align="right"| Launch time:
| 10:00 AM, Launch should take less than an hour.
|-
!align="right" valign="top"| Launch Location:
|
Strasburg, VA
|-
!align="right"| Coordination/Talk-in:
| 146.685 MHz simplex (this might change, please monitor Twitter (@HacDCSpaceblimp) and mailing list for updates.
|-
!align="right"| Planned Altitude:
| 120,000 Feet
|-
!align="right"| Planned Ascent Rate:
| 1,000 feet/minute
|-
!align="right"| Planned Descent Rate:
| 1,000 feet/minute
|-
!align="right"| Primary Beacon:
| Son-of-WhereAVR with ublox GPS. Yaesu VX-1 handi-talkie with 1 W Transmitter, call sign W3HAC-11 ([http://aprs.fi/?call=W3HAC-11 map]), Frequency 144.390 MHz
|-
!align="right"| Secondary Beacon:
| GSM mobile phone modue, uBlox GPS
|-
!align="right"| Payload:
| 9 DOF IMU, Geiger counter, temperature, pressure, humidity, and light sensors
|}

== Payload ==

=== Radios ===
There were two radios on board the blimp that transmitted out the GPS data:

* The primary radio was tied to the GPS and transmitted out to a network of amateur radio enthusiasts who then passed the location information on to get mapped here: [http://aprs.fi/?call=W3HAC-11 APRS.fi]. We also ran some custom software that passes this data on to a Twitter account (once per minute!) which you could follow on your phone: [http://twitter.com/#!/DCSpaceblimp DC Spaceblimp Primary Twitter Feed]. (Click the link in the Twitter to pull up a map!)

* The secondary radio was actually a GSM cell phone module, and broadcasted its data when in range of a cell tower. It broadcasted both GPS data for tracking, and a lot of the sensor data for science. It also twittered through [http://twitter.com/#!/SocietyofRobotz Society Of Robots Twitter Feed].

=== Cameras ===
The payload contains a couple cameras:

* a video camera (Canon Zi6)
* a still camera (Canon Powershot A-480) running custom firmware to get better exposures from space

=== Instrumentation ===
and a lot of instrumentation:

* a geiger counter
* 9 degree-of-freedom IMU ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_measurement_unit Inertial Measurement Unit on Wikipedia])
* high-speed (50 sample/sec) accelerometer
* internal and external temperature sensors
* humidity sensor
* air pressure sensor
* IR and visible light sensors
* a solar panel, hooked up to measure the voltage

{{Template:Spaceblimp}}
[[Category:Spaceblimp]]

HacDC Spaceblimp 4

2011-07-11T20:32:30Z

Hexagon5un: /* Accelerometer */

Spaceblimp-4 sucessfully launched and retrieved: April 10, 2011
[[Image: sb4_IMG_7739_small.JPG | 500 px]]

== Summary ==

We launched from Breezewood Elementary School‎ at 1:30 pm, the balloon popped at 2:41 pm at 103,764 ft, and touched back down at 3:09 pm. Again, we were exceptionally lucky with the recovery and were able to drive up to within 200 ft of the package.

The "package" contains two GPS units connected to radio modems that transmit the balloon's location every 30s, various instruments, and still and video cameras. It's all enclosed in super-space-age, soft-sided insulated lunchboxes and secured to pegboard, cushioned for landing with pink insulation foam.

[[Image: sb4_path.png | 300 px]] [[Image: sb4_the_package.jpg | 430px]]

== Video ==
<br>
This time, in addition to running a still camera, we also put up a HD video camera running 720p at 60 frames/sec. The results are fantastic!

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Cz4s8potWE SB4 at apex on youtube] about 80 seconds before the balloon popped.
Notice how quickly it stabilized as the chute opened. Don't be deceived, though, it got up to 136 mph within the first minute of fall -- there's just not much chute drag in space.

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwT_LmqpgCc SB4 launch on youtube]. Skipping hours of preparation and 20 minutes filling up the balloon, going straight to the good stuff...

Why no movies in-between? The clouds were very heavy on launch day, and most of the footage is white-out. Something failed in the video camera a few minutes after popping too, so there's no re-entry video.

Oh yeah, and for fun all of the raw video is posted up on projects in /home/spaceblimp4, and here is the script I used to make the youtube-compatible videos: [[Media: sb4_editingMovieForYoutube.txt]]

== Data ==

=== On-board Logging ===

The on-board datalogger keeps records of interior/exterior temperature and GPS data.

[[Media: SB-4_flight_log.gz]] (and here's the code in R that generates the above images, and some PDFs to boot: [[Media: spaceblimp4_analysis.gz]])

[[Image: sb4_altitude_time.png | 300px]] [[Image: sb4_gpsHeading_time.png | 300px]] [[Image: sb4_location.png | 300px]] [[Image: sb4_riseSpeed_altitude.png | 300px]] [[Image: sb4_riseSpeed_histogram.png | 300px]] [[Image: sb4_riseSpeed_time.png | 300px]] [[Image: sb4_temp_altitude.png | 300px]] [[Image: sb4_temp_time.png | 300px]] [[Image: sb4_windspeed_altitude.png | 300px]] [[Image: sb4_windspeed_time.png | 300px]]

=== Accelerometer ===

The accelerometer package flown was the same as last time, with the exception of having half the memory, so there are 50 observations per second. The data are 0-255, with (roughly) 127 being no acceleration. If you graph it, you can clearly see liftoff, popping, and landing. Until we get some time for analysis, the rest is left up to you:

[[Image: sb4_accelerometer.png | 300px]]

[http://www.postero.us/spaceblimp4_accelerometer.csv.gz Accelerometer CSV raw data]
Here's some python code to get you started with the accelerometer data: [[Media: analyseAccelerometer.py]]. (Requires SciPy for plotting.)

== Launch Plans (Historic) ==
{| {{Prettytable|width=600px}}
!align="right"| Planned launch date:
| Sunday, April 10, 2011
|-
!align="right"| Launch time:
| 10:00 AM, Launch should take less than an hour.
|-
!align="right" valign="top"| Launch Location:
|
: Where: Breezewood Elementary School‎
: Address: 133 North Main Street, Breezewood PA 15533-8142
: Lat/Long: 39.9970,-78.2440
|-
!align="right"| Coordination/Talk-in:
| 146.685 MHz simplex
|-
!align="right"| Planned Altitude:
| 100,000 feet
|-
!align="right"| Planned Ascent Rate:
| 1,300 ft/min
|-
!align="right"| Planned Descent Rate:
| 1,000 ft/min
|-
!align="right"| Primary Beacon:
| Tiny Track 4 with 0.5 W transmitter on 144.390 MHz, call sign W3HAC-11 ([http://aprs.fi/?call=W3HAC-11 map]). $3 GPS module
|-
!align="right"| Secondary Beacon:
| Son-of-WhereAVR with ublox GPS. Yaesu VX-1 handi-talkie with 1 W Transmitter, call sign W3HAC-12 ([http://aprs.fi/?call=W3HAC-12 map]), Frequency 432.225 MHz
|-
!align="right"| Payload:
| Still camera, HD video camera, Geiger counter to measure cosmic rays, a nine degree of freedom Inertial Measurement Unit, accelerometer, pressure, light and temperature sensors.
|}

The balloon is a 2000g Kaymont/Totex with 291 cubic feet of helium. The total weight of the capsule is about five pounds.

{{Template:Spaceblimp}}
[[Category:Spaceblimp]]

HacDC Spaceblimp

2011-07-11T20:29:40Z

Hexagon5un: /* Current Status */

[[Category:Ongoing_Projects]]

[[Image: sb5_launch_still.jpg | 300 px]] [[Image: sb3_IMG_6899_small.jpg | 530 px]]

A collection of stuff about HacDC's near space initiatives, including the ''Hackerspaces In Space'' Contest entry (2010).

=Current Status=

Spaceblimp 5 launched July 9, 2011

Details: [http://wiki.hacdc.org/index.php/HacDC_Spaceblimp_5 Spaceblimp-5]

=About the HacDC Spaceblimp Project=
* On Aug 7, 2010, we launched our first balloon: [[HacDC Spaceblimp 1]]. Its epic journey began well enough, but the antenna came loose somewhere around 60,000 ft and we never heard from it again. Until three months later, when a farmer found it in her field, called up a friend (who happened to be an engineer) and it came back home. The pictures are fantastic, but the telemetry data was lost -- it overwrote itself many times over before the batteries finally gave up.

* Following (what we thought was) the loss of Spaceblimp-1, we scrambled and launched [[HacDC Spaceblimp 2]] on Aug 21. It went flawlessly -- fast, light, and with good radio contact the whole way through. It may be the third fastest-ascending amateur radio balloon. We were disqualified from the Hackerspaces in Space competition because we went over budget, but they said we would have come in fourth if not. Sigh. But again, it was an inspiring success.

* [[HacDC Spaceblimp 3]] was successfully launched and retrieved on 13 Nov 2010 with a much more involved payload than previous versions. More cameras, HD video, more radios, an accelerometer, geiger counter, pressure sensor. Weight and price weren't constraints this time.

* [[HacDC Spaceblimp 4]] set the HacDC altitude record, topping out at 103,764 ft! This flight got fantastic video -- make sure to check out the two youtube links.

* Insatiable and unstoppable, the HacDC team puts up [[HacDC Spaceblimp 5]] on July 9, 2011. We bought a yet-bigger balloon to try to get higher, and so: 118,533 ft!

* If you want to get involved or learn more or contribute to the program...[http://hacdc.org/mailman/listinfo/spaceblimp Subscribe to the Spaceblimp email list]

=Related Links=
* [http://www.flickr.com/groups/spaceblimp/ HacDC Spaceblimp Flickr Group]
* [http://gallery.jbwa.net/SpaceBlimp/SB1/ Images from Spaceblimp 1]
* [http://gallery.jbwa.net/SpaceBlimp/SB3/ Images from Spaceblimp 3]

GPS visualizations of balloon trajectory from the Flickr Group (made with GPS Visualizer http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/):

[http://www.flickr.com/photos/79273063@N00/4946912327/ Google Earth GPS trajectory visualization] and
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/79273063@N00/4947501800/ Google Maps GPS trajectory visualization]

{{Template:Spaceblimp}}
[[Category:Spaceblimp]]

HacDC Spaceblimp

2011-07-11T20:29:19Z

Hexagon5un:

[[Category:Ongoing_Projects]]

[[Image: sb5_launch_still.jpg | 300 px]] [[Image: sb3_IMG_6899_small.jpg | 530 px]]

A collection of stuff about HacDC's near space initiatives, including the ''Hackerspaces In Space'' Contest entry (2010).

=Current Status=

Spaceblimp 5 planned launch July 9, 2011

Details: [http://wiki.hacdc.org/index.php/HacDC_Spaceblimp_5 Spaceblimp-5]

=About the HacDC Spaceblimp Project=
* On Aug 7, 2010, we launched our first balloon: [[HacDC Spaceblimp 1]]. Its epic journey began well enough, but the antenna came loose somewhere around 60,000 ft and we never heard from it again. Until three months later, when a farmer found it in her field, called up a friend (who happened to be an engineer) and it came back home. The pictures are fantastic, but the telemetry data was lost -- it overwrote itself many times over before the batteries finally gave up.

* Following (what we thought was) the loss of Spaceblimp-1, we scrambled and launched [[HacDC Spaceblimp 2]] on Aug 21. It went flawlessly -- fast, light, and with good radio contact the whole way through. It may be the third fastest-ascending amateur radio balloon. We were disqualified from the Hackerspaces in Space competition because we went over budget, but they said we would have come in fourth if not. Sigh. But again, it was an inspiring success.

* [[HacDC Spaceblimp 3]] was successfully launched and retrieved on 13 Nov 2010 with a much more involved payload than previous versions. More cameras, HD video, more radios, an accelerometer, geiger counter, pressure sensor. Weight and price weren't constraints this time.

* [[HacDC Spaceblimp 4]] set the HacDC altitude record, topping out at 103,764 ft! This flight got fantastic video -- make sure to check out the two youtube links.

* Insatiable and unstoppable, the HacDC team puts up [[HacDC Spaceblimp 5]] on July 9, 2011. We bought a yet-bigger balloon to try to get higher, and so: 118,533 ft!

* If you want to get involved or learn more or contribute to the program...[http://hacdc.org/mailman/listinfo/spaceblimp Subscribe to the Spaceblimp email list]

=Related Links=
* [http://www.flickr.com/groups/spaceblimp/ HacDC Spaceblimp Flickr Group]
* [http://gallery.jbwa.net/SpaceBlimp/SB1/ Images from Spaceblimp 1]
* [http://gallery.jbwa.net/SpaceBlimp/SB3/ Images from Spaceblimp 3]

GPS visualizations of balloon trajectory from the Flickr Group (made with GPS Visualizer http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/):

[http://www.flickr.com/photos/79273063@N00/4946912327/ Google Earth GPS trajectory visualization] and
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/79273063@N00/4947501800/ Google Maps GPS trajectory visualization]

{{Template:Spaceblimp}}
[[Category:Spaceblimp]]

File:Sb3 IMG 6899 small.jpg

2011-07-11T20:28:15Z

Hexagon5un:

HacDC Spaceblimp

2011-07-11T20:27:57Z

Hexagon5un:

[[Category:Ongoing_Projects]]

[[Image: sb5_launch_still.jpg | 300 px]] [[Image: sb3_IMG_6899_small.jpg | 300 px]]

A collection of stuff about HacDC's near space initiatives, including the ''Hackerspaces In Space'' Contest entry (2010).

=Current Status=

Spaceblimp 5 planned launch July 9, 2011

Details: [http://wiki.hacdc.org/index.php/HacDC_Spaceblimp_5 Spaceblimp-5]

=About the HacDC Spaceblimp Project=
* On Aug 7, 2010, we launched our first balloon: [[HacDC Spaceblimp 1]]. Its epic journey began well enough, but the antenna came loose somewhere around 60,000 ft and we never heard from it again. Until three months later, when a farmer found it in her field, called up a friend (who happened to be an engineer) and it came back home. The pictures are fantastic, but the telemetry data was lost -- it overwrote itself many times over before the batteries finally gave up.

* Following (what we thought was) the loss of Spaceblimp-1, we scrambled and launched [[HacDC Spaceblimp 2]] on Aug 21. It went flawlessly -- fast, light, and with good radio contact the whole way through. It may be the third fastest-ascending amateur radio balloon. We were disqualified from the Hackerspaces in Space competition because we went over budget, but they said we would have come in fourth if not. Sigh. But again, it was an inspiring success.

* [[HacDC Spaceblimp 3]] was successfully launched and retrieved on 13 Nov 2010 with a much more involved payload than previous versions. More cameras, HD video, more radios, an accelerometer, geiger counter, pressure sensor. Weight and price weren't constraints this time.

* [[HacDC Spaceblimp 4]] set the HacDC altitude record, topping out at 103,764 ft! This flight got fantastic video -- make sure to check out the two youtube links.

* Insatiable and unstoppable, the HacDC team puts up [[HacDC Spaceblimp 5]] on July 9, 2011. We bought a yet-bigger balloon to try to get higher, and so: 118,533 ft!

* If you want to get involved or learn more or contribute to the program...[http://hacdc.org/mailman/listinfo/spaceblimp Subscribe to the Spaceblimp email list]

=Related Links=
* [http://www.flickr.com/groups/spaceblimp/ HacDC Spaceblimp Flickr Group]
* [http://gallery.jbwa.net/SpaceBlimp/SB1/ Images from Spaceblimp 1]
* [http://gallery.jbwa.net/SpaceBlimp/SB3/ Images from Spaceblimp 3]

GPS visualizations of balloon trajectory from the Flickr Group (made with GPS Visualizer http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/):

[http://www.flickr.com/photos/79273063@N00/4946912327/ Google Earth GPS trajectory visualization] and
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/79273063@N00/4947501800/ Google Maps GPS trajectory visualization]

{{Template:Spaceblimp}}
[[Category:Spaceblimp]]

HacDC Spaceblimp 2

2011-07-11T20:23:33Z

Hexagon5un: /* Spaceblimp-2 Summary */

== Flight Summary ==

Flight date: 8/21/10

Time of liftoff: 10:47 (All times are GMT-5)

Time of touchdown: 11:49

Time of recovery: 12:20

Total flight time: 1:02 (62 minutes)

Liftoff to recovery time: 1:33 (93 minutes)

Touchdown to recovery time: 0:31 (31 minutes)

Weight of payload/chute: 1lb 13oz

Total cost of launch: $320

== Airframe & Rigging ==

Balloon: 800g Kaymont/Totex latex weather balloon cost: $69

Parachute Cord: 250-lb test Dacron line

Balloon Cord: 50-lb test Dacron line

Fill: 190 cubic-feet Helium - cost: $95 (~10# nozzle lift, gas @ $0.50/Cu-ft)

Chute: Rocketchutes flat 24" - cost: $9

Capsule: Insulated lunch pail (free, valued at ~$7)

== Payload ==

Canon model PowerShot SD300 running CHDK (Canon Hack Development Kit) intervalometer script - cost: $20

Canon Li battery cost: $3.25

Canon 2GB SD card: $6

Falcom (uBlox based) GPS receiver + Serantel Antenna module - cost $47

Radiometrix VHF Narrow Band 300mW transmitter - cost $38

Ultralife U9VL-X Lithium-Manganese Dioxide non-rechargable battery cost: $7

Flight computer/Terminal Node Controller (TNC) - cost $19

[http://www.flickr.com/groups/spaceblimp/pool/with/4922202931/ HacDC Spaceblimp Flickr Group Pool]

[http://aprs.fi/?call=w3hac-11&dt=1282348800&mt=roadmap&z=11&timerange=3600 aprs.fi Flight Map]

== Some details on the avionics ==

Our balloon carried a minimalist avionics package consisting of a custom built APRS tracker and a Canon PowerShot SD300 digital camera.

The camera is configured to take pictures every 20 seconds using CHDK (http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK) and one of the stock intervalometer scripts. It is powered by its own rechargeable lithium battery and operates independently of the tracker.

The tracker is based around an atmega328p AVR microcontroller, running code derived from an open source AVR based APRS tracker called the WhereAVR (http://garydion.com/projects/whereavr/). By updating the sine wave generation code to use filtered 7-bit pulse width modulation in place of the 4-bit resistor network, we were able to improve tone quality with a reduced part count. A few additional components were added, including an I2C eeprom for local backup of flight data, external and internal I2C temperature sensors, and a cutdown MOSFET for switching power to a short strip of nichrome wire coiled around the balloon line (the cutdown system was not used in our final flight because we were apprehensive about the complications it added to the balloon rigging).

To keep things light, compact, and simple, we designed a surface mount circuit board to integrate all of the trackers components with a Falcom FSA03 GPS module and a 300mW Radiometrix HX-1 144.39 MHz transmitter. The board was fabricated using the toner transfer method and hand soldered.

For an antenna we used the common 300 ohm twinlead j-pole design (http://www.qsl.net/wb3gck/jpole.htm), tuned as close as possible for use on our frequency (144.39 MHz) and fed with a short length of 50 ohm coax cable for routing/strain relief.

The tracker is powered by a single lithium 9v battery, and regulated down to 5v and 3.3v by linear regulators on the board. The typically undesirable loss of power to heat with these regulators is useful in this case for warming the electronics in the extreme cold temperatures encountered during the flight.

Each chase vehicle had a radio tuned to 146.415 for simplex communication between the vehicles, and another radio tuned to 144.390 for receiving packets from the balloon. For packet decoding we used radios with built in TNCs or laptops with external modems/soundcard modems and TNC software (Soundmodem and Xastir for Linux, AGWPE and UI-View for Windows).

== Data ==

The onboard data recorder from SB2 returned: [[Media: blimp2_eeprom_log.txt]]

[[Category:Spaceblimp]]
{{Template:Spaceblimp}}

HacDC Spaceblimp 2

2011-07-11T20:23:23Z

Hexagon5un: /* Spaceblimp-2 */

== Spaceblimp-2 Summary ==

Flight date: 8/21/10

Time of liftoff: 10:47 (All times are GMT-5)

Time of touchdown: 11:49

Time of recovery: 12:20

Total flight time: 1:02 (62 minutes)

Liftoff to recovery time: 1:33 (93 minutes)

Touchdown to recovery time: 0:31 (31 minutes)

Weight of payload/chute: 1lb 13oz

Total cost of launch: $320

== Airframe & Rigging ==

Balloon: 800g Kaymont/Totex latex weather balloon cost: $69

Parachute Cord: 250-lb test Dacron line

Balloon Cord: 50-lb test Dacron line

Fill: 190 cubic-feet Helium - cost: $95 (~10# nozzle lift, gas @ $0.50/Cu-ft)

Chute: Rocketchutes flat 24" - cost: $9

Capsule: Insulated lunch pail (free, valued at ~$7)

== Payload ==

Canon model PowerShot SD300 running CHDK (Canon Hack Development Kit) intervalometer script - cost: $20

Canon Li battery cost: $3.25

Canon 2GB SD card: $6

Falcom (uBlox based) GPS receiver + Serantel Antenna module - cost $47

Radiometrix VHF Narrow Band 300mW transmitter - cost $38

Ultralife U9VL-X Lithium-Manganese Dioxide non-rechargable battery cost: $7

Flight computer/Terminal Node Controller (TNC) - cost $19

[http://www.flickr.com/groups/spaceblimp/pool/with/4922202931/ HacDC Spaceblimp Flickr Group Pool]

[http://aprs.fi/?call=w3hac-11&dt=1282348800&mt=roadmap&z=11&timerange=3600 aprs.fi Flight Map]

== Some details on the avionics ==

Our balloon carried a minimalist avionics package consisting of a custom built APRS tracker and a Canon PowerShot SD300 digital camera.

The camera is configured to take pictures every 20 seconds using CHDK (http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK) and one of the stock intervalometer scripts. It is powered by its own rechargeable lithium battery and operates independently of the tracker.

The tracker is based around an atmega328p AVR microcontroller, running code derived from an open source AVR based APRS tracker called the WhereAVR (http://garydion.com/projects/whereavr/). By updating the sine wave generation code to use filtered 7-bit pulse width modulation in place of the 4-bit resistor network, we were able to improve tone quality with a reduced part count. A few additional components were added, including an I2C eeprom for local backup of flight data, external and internal I2C temperature sensors, and a cutdown MOSFET for switching power to a short strip of nichrome wire coiled around the balloon line (the cutdown system was not used in our final flight because we were apprehensive about the complications it added to the balloon rigging).

To keep things light, compact, and simple, we designed a surface mount circuit board to integrate all of the trackers components with a Falcom FSA03 GPS module and a 300mW Radiometrix HX-1 144.39 MHz transmitter. The board was fabricated using the toner transfer method and hand soldered.

For an antenna we used the common 300 ohm twinlead j-pole design (http://www.qsl.net/wb3gck/jpole.htm), tuned as close as possible for use on our frequency (144.39 MHz) and fed with a short length of 50 ohm coax cable for routing/strain relief.

The tracker is powered by a single lithium 9v battery, and regulated down to 5v and 3.3v by linear regulators on the board. The typically undesirable loss of power to heat with these regulators is useful in this case for warming the electronics in the extreme cold temperatures encountered during the flight.

Each chase vehicle had a radio tuned to 146.415 for simplex communication between the vehicles, and another radio tuned to 144.390 for receiving packets from the balloon. For packet decoding we used radios with built in TNCs or laptops with external modems/soundcard modems and TNC software (Soundmodem and Xastir for Linux, AGWPE and UI-View for Windows).

== Data ==

The onboard data recorder from SB2 returned: [[Media: blimp2_eeprom_log.txt]]

[[Category:Spaceblimp]]
{{Template:Spaceblimp}}

HacDC Spaceblimp 2

2011-07-11T20:23:09Z

Hexagon5un:

== Spaceblimp-2 ==

Flight date: 8/21/10

Time of liftoff: 10:47 (All times are GMT-5)

Time of touchdown: 11:49

Time of recovery: 12:20

Total flight time: 1:02 (62 minutes)

Liftoff to recovery time: 1:33 (93 minutes)

Touchdown to recovery time: 0:31 (31 minutes)

Weight of payload/chute: 1lb 13oz

Total cost of launch: $320

== Airframe & Rigging ==

Balloon: 800g Kaymont/Totex latex weather balloon cost: $69

Parachute Cord: 250-lb test Dacron line

Balloon Cord: 50-lb test Dacron line

Fill: 190 cubic-feet Helium - cost: $95 (~10# nozzle lift, gas @ $0.50/Cu-ft)

Chute: Rocketchutes flat 24" - cost: $9

Capsule: Insulated lunch pail (free, valued at ~$7)

== Payload ==

Canon model PowerShot SD300 running CHDK (Canon Hack Development Kit) intervalometer script - cost: $20

Canon Li battery cost: $3.25

Canon 2GB SD card: $6

Falcom (uBlox based) GPS receiver + Serantel Antenna module - cost $47

Radiometrix VHF Narrow Band 300mW transmitter - cost $38

Ultralife U9VL-X Lithium-Manganese Dioxide non-rechargable battery cost: $7

Flight computer/Terminal Node Controller (TNC) - cost $19

[http://www.flickr.com/groups/spaceblimp/pool/with/4922202931/ HacDC Spaceblimp Flickr Group Pool]

[http://aprs.fi/?call=w3hac-11&dt=1282348800&mt=roadmap&z=11&timerange=3600 aprs.fi Flight Map]

== Some details on the avionics ==

Our balloon carried a minimalist avionics package consisting of a custom built APRS tracker and a Canon PowerShot SD300 digital camera.

The camera is configured to take pictures every 20 seconds using CHDK (http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK) and one of the stock intervalometer scripts. It is powered by its own rechargeable lithium battery and operates independently of the tracker.

The tracker is based around an atmega328p AVR microcontroller, running code derived from an open source AVR based APRS tracker called the WhereAVR (http://garydion.com/projects/whereavr/). By updating the sine wave generation code to use filtered 7-bit pulse width modulation in place of the 4-bit resistor network, we were able to improve tone quality with a reduced part count. A few additional components were added, including an I2C eeprom for local backup of flight data, external and internal I2C temperature sensors, and a cutdown MOSFET for switching power to a short strip of nichrome wire coiled around the balloon line (the cutdown system was not used in our final flight because we were apprehensive about the complications it added to the balloon rigging).

To keep things light, compact, and simple, we designed a surface mount circuit board to integrate all of the trackers components with a Falcom FSA03 GPS module and a 300mW Radiometrix HX-1 144.39 MHz transmitter. The board was fabricated using the toner transfer method and hand soldered.

For an antenna we used the common 300 ohm twinlead j-pole design (http://www.qsl.net/wb3gck/jpole.htm), tuned as close as possible for use on our frequency (144.39 MHz) and fed with a short length of 50 ohm coax cable for routing/strain relief.

The tracker is powered by a single lithium 9v battery, and regulated down to 5v and 3.3v by linear regulators on the board. The typically undesirable loss of power to heat with these regulators is useful in this case for warming the electronics in the extreme cold temperatures encountered during the flight.

Each chase vehicle had a radio tuned to 146.415 for simplex communication between the vehicles, and another radio tuned to 144.390 for receiving packets from the balloon. For packet decoding we used radios with built in TNCs or laptops with external modems/soundcard modems and TNC software (Soundmodem and Xastir for Linux, AGWPE and UI-View for Windows).

== Data ==

The onboard data recorder from SB2 returned: [[Media: blimp2_eeprom_log.txt]]

[[Category:Spaceblimp]]
{{Template:Spaceblimp}}

File:Blimp2 eeprom log.txt

2011-07-11T20:21:53Z

Hexagon5un:

HacDC Spaceblimp 2

2011-07-11T20:21:39Z

Hexagon5un: /* Data */

'''Spaceblimp-2'''

Flight date: 8/21/10

Time of liftoff: 10:47 (All times are GMT-5)

Time of touchdown: 11:49

Time of recovery: 12:20

Total flight time: 1:02 (62 minutes)

Liftoff to recovery time: 1:33 (93 minutes)

Touchdown to recovery time: 0:31 (31 minutes)

Weight of payload/chute: 1lb 13oz

Total cost of launch: $320

'''Airframe & Rigging''':

Balloon: 800g Kaymont/Totex latex weather balloon cost: $69

Parachute Cord: 250-lb test Dacron line

Balloon Cord: 50-lb test Dacron line

Fill: 190 cubic-feet Helium - cost: $95 (~10# nozzle lift, gas @ $0.50/Cu-ft)

Chute: Rocketchutes flat 24" - cost: $9

Capsule: Insulated lunch pail (free, valued at ~$7)

'''Payload''':

Canon model PowerShot SD300 running CHDK (Canon Hack Development Kit) intervalometer script - cost: $20

Canon Li battery cost: $3.25

Canon 2GB SD card: $6

Falcom (uBlox based) GPS receiver + Serantel Antenna module - cost $47

Radiometrix VHF Narrow Band 300mW transmitter - cost $38

Ultralife U9VL-X Lithium-Manganese Dioxide non-rechargable battery cost: $7

Flight computer/Terminal Node Controller (TNC) - cost $19

[http://www.flickr.com/groups/spaceblimp/pool/with/4922202931/ HacDC Spaceblimp Flickr Group Pool]

[http://aprs.fi/?call=w3hac-11&dt=1282348800&mt=roadmap&z=11&timerange=3600 aprs.fi Flight Map]

'''Some details on the avionics''':

Our balloon carried a minimalist avionics package consisting of a custom built APRS tracker and a Canon PowerShot SD300 digital camera.

The camera is configured to take pictures every 20 seconds using CHDK (http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK) and one of the stock intervalometer scripts. It is powered by its own rechargeable lithium battery and operates independently of the tracker.

The tracker is based around an atmega328p AVR microcontroller, running code derived from an open source AVR based APRS tracker called the WhereAVR (http://garydion.com/projects/whereavr/). By updating the sine wave generation code to use filtered 7-bit pulse width modulation in place of the 4-bit resistor network, we were able to improve tone quality with a reduced part count. A few additional components were added, including an I2C eeprom for local backup of flight data, external and internal I2C temperature sensors, and a cutdown MOSFET for switching power to a short strip of nichrome wire coiled around the balloon line (the cutdown system was not used in our final flight because we were apprehensive about the complications it added to the balloon rigging).

To keep things light, compact, and simple, we designed a surface mount circuit board to integrate all of the trackers components with a Falcom FSA03 GPS module and a 300mW Radiometrix HX-1 144.39 MHz transmitter. The board was fabricated using the toner transfer method and hand soldered.

For an antenna we used the common 300 ohm twinlead j-pole design (http://www.qsl.net/wb3gck/jpole.htm), tuned as close as possible for use on our frequency (144.39 MHz) and fed with a short length of 50 ohm coax cable for routing/strain relief.

The tracker is powered by a single lithium 9v battery, and regulated down to 5v and 3.3v by linear regulators on the board. The typically undesirable loss of power to heat with these regulators is useful in this case for warming the electronics in the extreme cold temperatures encountered during the flight.

Each chase vehicle had a radio tuned to 146.415 for simplex communication between the vehicles, and another radio tuned to 144.390 for receiving packets from the balloon. For packet decoding we used radios with built in TNCs or laptops with external modems/soundcard modems and TNC software (Soundmodem and Xastir for Linux, AGWPE and UI-View for Windows).

=== Data ===

The onboard data recorder from SB2 returned: [[Media: blimp2_eeprom_log.txt]]

[[Category:Spaceblimp]]
{{Template:Spaceblimp}}

File:Blimp2 eeprom log.txt.gz

2011-07-11T20:20:07Z

Hexagon5un:

HacDC Spaceblimp 2

2011-07-11T20:19:40Z

Hexagon5un:

'''Spaceblimp-2'''

Flight date: 8/21/10

Time of liftoff: 10:47 (All times are GMT-5)

Time of touchdown: 11:49

Time of recovery: 12:20

Total flight time: 1:02 (62 minutes)

Liftoff to recovery time: 1:33 (93 minutes)

Touchdown to recovery time: 0:31 (31 minutes)

Weight of payload/chute: 1lb 13oz

Total cost of launch: $320

'''Airframe & Rigging''':

Balloon: 800g Kaymont/Totex latex weather balloon cost: $69

Parachute Cord: 250-lb test Dacron line

Balloon Cord: 50-lb test Dacron line

Fill: 190 cubic-feet Helium - cost: $95 (~10# nozzle lift, gas @ $0.50/Cu-ft)

Chute: Rocketchutes flat 24" - cost: $9

Capsule: Insulated lunch pail (free, valued at ~$7)

'''Payload''':

Canon model PowerShot SD300 running CHDK (Canon Hack Development Kit) intervalometer script - cost: $20

Canon Li battery cost: $3.25

Canon 2GB SD card: $6

Falcom (uBlox based) GPS receiver + Serantel Antenna module - cost $47

Radiometrix VHF Narrow Band 300mW transmitter - cost $38

Ultralife U9VL-X Lithium-Manganese Dioxide non-rechargable battery cost: $7

Flight computer/Terminal Node Controller (TNC) - cost $19

[http://www.flickr.com/groups/spaceblimp/pool/with/4922202931/ HacDC Spaceblimp Flickr Group Pool]

[http://aprs.fi/?call=w3hac-11&dt=1282348800&mt=roadmap&z=11&timerange=3600 aprs.fi Flight Map]

'''Some details on the avionics''':

Our balloon carried a minimalist avionics package consisting of a custom built APRS tracker and a Canon PowerShot SD300 digital camera.

The camera is configured to take pictures every 20 seconds using CHDK (http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK) and one of the stock intervalometer scripts. It is powered by its own rechargeable lithium battery and operates independently of the tracker.

The tracker is based around an atmega328p AVR microcontroller, running code derived from an open source AVR based APRS tracker called the WhereAVR (http://garydion.com/projects/whereavr/). By updating the sine wave generation code to use filtered 7-bit pulse width modulation in place of the 4-bit resistor network, we were able to improve tone quality with a reduced part count. A few additional components were added, including an I2C eeprom for local backup of flight data, external and internal I2C temperature sensors, and a cutdown MOSFET for switching power to a short strip of nichrome wire coiled around the balloon line (the cutdown system was not used in our final flight because we were apprehensive about the complications it added to the balloon rigging).

To keep things light, compact, and simple, we designed a surface mount circuit board to integrate all of the trackers components with a Falcom FSA03 GPS module and a 300mW Radiometrix HX-1 144.39 MHz transmitter. The board was fabricated using the toner transfer method and hand soldered.

For an antenna we used the common 300 ohm twinlead j-pole design (http://www.qsl.net/wb3gck/jpole.htm), tuned as close as possible for use on our frequency (144.39 MHz) and fed with a short length of 50 ohm coax cable for routing/strain relief.

The tracker is powered by a single lithium 9v battery, and regulated down to 5v and 3.3v by linear regulators on the board. The typically undesirable loss of power to heat with these regulators is useful in this case for warming the electronics in the extreme cold temperatures encountered during the flight.

Each chase vehicle had a radio tuned to 146.415 for simplex communication between the vehicles, and another radio tuned to 144.390 for receiving packets from the balloon. For packet decoding we used radios with built in TNCs or laptops with external modems/soundcard modems and TNC software (Soundmodem and Xastir for Linux, AGWPE and UI-View for Windows).

=== Data ===

The onboard data recorder from SB2 returned: [[Media: blimp2_eeprom_log.txt.gz]]

[[Category:Spaceblimp]]
{{Template:Spaceblimp}}

HacDC Spaceblimp

2011-07-11T20:13:43Z

Hexagon5un:

[[Category:Ongoing_Projects]]

[[Image: sb5_launch_still.jpg | 300 px]]

A collection of stuff about HacDC's near space initiatives, including the ''Hackerspaces In Space'' Contest entry (2010).

=Current Status=

Spaceblimp 5 planned launch July 9, 2011

Details: [http://wiki.hacdc.org/index.php/HacDC_Spaceblimp_5 Spaceblimp-5]

=About the HacDC Spaceblimp Project=
* On Aug 7, 2010, we launched our first balloon: [[HacDC Spaceblimp 1]]. Its epic journey began well enough, but the antenna came loose somewhere around 60,000 ft and we never heard from it again. Until three months later, when a farmer found it in her field, called up a friend (who happened to be an engineer) and it came back home. The pictures are fantastic, but the telemetry data was lost -- it overwrote itself many times over before the batteries finally gave up.

* Following (what we thought was) the loss of Spaceblimp-1, we scrambled and launched [[HacDC Spaceblimp 2]] on Aug 21. It went flawlessly -- fast, light, and with good radio contact the whole way through. It may be the third fastest-ascending amateur radio balloon. We were disqualified from the Hackerspaces in Space competition because we went over budget, but they said we would have come in fourth if not. Sigh. But again, it was an inspiring success.

* [[HacDC Spaceblimp 3]] was successfully launched and retrieved on 13 Nov 2010 with a much more involved payload than previous versions. More cameras, HD video, more radios, an accelerometer, geiger counter, pressure sensor. Weight and price weren't constraints this time.

* [[HacDC Spaceblimp 4]] set the HacDC altitude record, topping out at 103,764 ft! This flight got fantastic video -- make sure to check out the two youtube links.

* Insatiable and unstoppable, the HacDC team puts up [[HacDC Spaceblimp 5]] on July 9, 2011. We bought a yet-bigger balloon to try to get higher, and so: 118,533 ft!

* If you want to get involved or learn more or contribute to the program...[http://hacdc.org/mailman/listinfo/spaceblimp Subscribe to the Spaceblimp email list]

=Related Links=
* [http://www.flickr.com/groups/spaceblimp/ HacDC Spaceblimp Flickr Group]
* [http://gallery.jbwa.net/SpaceBlimp/SB1/ Images from Spaceblimp 1]
* [http://gallery.jbwa.net/SpaceBlimp/SB3/ Images from Spaceblimp 3]

GPS visualizations of balloon trajectory from the Flickr Group (made with GPS Visualizer http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/):

[http://www.flickr.com/photos/79273063@N00/4946912327/ Google Earth GPS trajectory visualization] and
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/79273063@N00/4947501800/ Google Maps GPS trajectory visualization]

{{Template:Spaceblimp}}
[[Category:Spaceblimp]]

HacDC Spaceblimp

2011-07-11T20:04:21Z

Hexagon5un: /* About the HacDC Spaceblimp Project */

[[Category:Ongoing_Projects]]

A collection of stuff about HacDC's near space initiatives, including the ''Hackerspaces In Space'' Contest entry (2010).

=Current Status=

Spaceblimp 5 planned launch July 9, 2011

Details: [http://wiki.hacdc.org/index.php/HacDC_Spaceblimp_5 Spaceblimp-5]

=About the HacDC Spaceblimp Project=
* On Aug 7, 2010, we launched our first balloon: [[HacDC Spaceblimp 1]]. Its epic journey began well enough, but the antenna came loose somewhere around 60,000 ft and we never heard from it again. Until three months later, when a farmer found it in her field, called up a friend (who happened to be an engineer) and it came back home. The pictures are fantastic, but the telemetry data was lost -- it overwrote itself many times over before the batteries finally gave up.

* Following (what we thought was) the loss of Spaceblimp-1, we scrambled and launched [[HacDC Spaceblimp 2]] on Aug 21. It went flawlessly -- fast, light, and with good radio contact the whole way through. It may be the third fastest-ascending amateur radio balloon. We were disqualified from the Hackerspaces in Space competition because we went over budget, but they said we would have come in fourth if not. Sigh. But again, it was an inspiring success.

* [[HacDC Spaceblimp 3]] was successfully launched and retrieved on 13 Nov 2010 with a much more involved payload than previous versions. More cameras, HD video, more radios, an accelerometer, geiger counter, pressure sensor. Weight and price weren't constraints this time.

* [[HacDC Spaceblimp 4]] set the HacDC altitude record, topping out at 103,764 ft! This flight got fantastic video -- make sure to check out the two youtube links.

* Insatiable and unstoppable, the HacDC team puts up [[HacDC Spaceblimp 5]] on July 9, 2011. We bought a yet-bigger balloon to try to get higher, and so: 118,533 ft!

* If you want to get involved or learn more or contribute to the program...[http://hacdc.org/mailman/listinfo/spaceblimp Subscribe to the Spaceblimp email list]

=Related Links=
* [http://www.flickr.com/groups/spaceblimp/ HacDC Spaceblimp Flickr Group]
* [http://gallery.jbwa.net/SpaceBlimp/SB1/ Images from Spaceblimp 1]
* [http://gallery.jbwa.net/SpaceBlimp/SB3/ Images from Spaceblimp 3]

GPS visualizations of balloon trajectory from the Flickr Group (made with GPS Visualizer http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/):

[http://www.flickr.com/photos/79273063@N00/4946912327/ Google Earth GPS trajectory visualization] and
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/79273063@N00/4947501800/ Google Maps GPS trajectory visualization]

{{Template:Spaceblimp}}
[[Category:Spaceblimp]]

HacDC Spaceblimp 5

2011-07-11T15:36:08Z

Hexagon5un:

[[Image: sb5_IMG_9220.JPG | 500 px]]

Spaceblimp-5 Launched: July 9, 2011

== Summary ==

This time we were going for altitude, and we got it! The max recorded altitude was 118,533 ft!

The launch site was: Strasburg VA, in a open area near the town on Rt 11, near the I-81.
Lat: 38.9968 N
Lon: 78.3508W

[[Image: sb5_launch_still.jpg | 320 px]] [[Image: sb5_track.jpg | 500 px]]

The path the balloon took was pretty strange, with the wind shifting between ascent and descent, and so we had a lot more driving to do than usual. The primary GPS/radio worked perfectly, and we got super-lucky with the recovery, picking up the package ~15 minutes after it hit the ground. The video camera overheated and failed before launch (booo!) and we're still working on the instrument data, but all signs point to some new and interesting results at the highest altitude we've ever run.

What challenges are left for the Spaceblimp project? Get involved: subscribe to [[http://hacdc.org/mailman/listinfo/spaceblimp the Spaceblimp mailing list]] and help us figure it out!

== Pictures and Video ==

== Data ==

=== Accelerometer ===

For now, here is the raw accelerometer data: [[Media: spaceblimp5_accelerometer.csv.gz]]

Analysis to come in the next few days....

=== Flight Tracker ===

== Launch Plans ==
{| {{Prettytable|width=600px}}
!align="right"| Planned launch date:
| Saturday, July 9, 2011
|-
!align="right"| Launch time:
| 10:00 AM, Launch should take less than an hour.
|-
!align="right" valign="top"| Launch Location:
|
Strasburg, VA
|-
!align="right"| Coordination/Talk-in:
| 146.685 MHz simplex (this might change, please monitor Twitter (@HacDCSpaceblimp) and mailing list for updates.
|-
!align="right"| Planned Altitude:
| 120,000 Feet
|-
!align="right"| Planned Ascent Rate:
| 1,000 feet/minute
|-
!align="right"| Planned Descent Rate:
| 1,000 feet/minute
|-
!align="right"| Primary Beacon:
| Son-of-WhereAVR with ublox GPS. Yaesu VX-1 handi-talkie with 1 W Transmitter, call sign W3HAC-11 ([http://aprs.fi/?call=W3HAC-11 map]), Frequency 144.390 MHz
|-
!align="right"| Secondary Beacon:
| GSM mobile phone modue, uBlox GPS
|-
!align="right"| Payload:
| 9 DOF IMU, Geiger counter, temperature, pressure, humidity, and light sensors
|}

== Payload ==

=== Radios ===
There were two radios on board the blimp that transmitted out the GPS data:

* The primary radio was tied to the GPS and transmitted out to a network of amateur radio enthusiasts who then passed the location information on to get mapped here: [http://aprs.fi/?call=W3HAC-11 APRS.fi]. We also ran some custom software that passes this data on to a Twitter account (once per minute!) which you could follow on your phone: [http://twitter.com/#!/DCSpaceblimp DC Spaceblimp Primary Twitter Feed]. (Click the link in the Twitter to pull up a map!)

* The secondary radio was actually a GSM cell phone module, and broadcasted its data when in range of a cell tower. It broadcasted both GPS data for tracking, and a lot of the sensor data for science. It also twittered through [http://twitter.com/#!/SocietyofRobotz Society Of Robots Twitter Feed].

=== Cameras ===
The payload contains a couple cameras:

* a video camera (Canon Zi6)
* a still camera (Canon Powershot A-480) running custom firmware to get better exposures from space

=== Instrumentation ===
and a lot of instrumentation:

* a geiger counter
* 9 degree-of-freedom IMU ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_measurement_unit Inertial Measurement Unit on Wikipedia])
* high-speed (50 sample/sec) accelerometer
* internal and external temperature sensors
* humidity sensor
* air pressure sensor
* IR and visible light sensors
* a solar panel, hooked up to measure the voltage

{{Template:Spaceblimp}}
[[Category:Spaceblimp]]

HacDC Spaceblimp 5

2011-07-11T15:34:22Z

Hexagon5un: /* Summary */

[[Image: sb5_IMG_9220.JPG | 500 px]]

Spaceblimp-5 Launched: July 9, 2011

== Summary ==

This time we were going for altitude, and we got it! The max recorded altitude was 118,533 ft!

The launch site was: Strasburg VA, in a open area near the town on Rt 11, near the I-81.
Lat: 38.9968 N
Lon: 78.3508W

[[Image: sb5_launch_still.jpg | 320 px]] [[Image: sb5_track.jpg | 500 px]]

The path the balloon took was pretty strange, with the wind shifting between ascent and descent, and so we had a lot more driving to do than usual. The primary GPS/radio worked perfectly, and we got super-lucky with the recovery, picking up the package ~15 minutes after it hit the ground. The video camera overheated and failed before launch (booo!) and we're still working on the instrument data, but all signs point to some new and interesting results at the highest altitude we've ever run.

What challenges are left for the Spaceblimp project? Get involved: subscribe to [[http://hacdc.org/mailman/listinfo/spaceblimp the Spaceblimp mailing list]] and help us figure it out!

There were two radios on board the blimp that transmitted out the GPS data:

* The primary radio was tied to the GPS and transmitted out to a network of amateur radio enthusiasts who then passed the location information on to get mapped here: [http://aprs.fi/?call=W3HAC-11 APRS.fi]. We also ran some custom software that passes this data on to a Twitter account (once per minute!) which you could follow on your phone: [http://twitter.com/#!/DCSpaceblimp DC Spaceblimp Primary Twitter Feed]. (Click the link in the Twitter to pull up a map!)

* The secondary radio was actually a GSM cell phone module, and broadcasted its data when in range of a cell tower. It broadcasted both GPS data for tracking, and a lot of the sensor data for science. It also twittered through [http://twitter.com/#!/SocietyofRobotz Society Of Robots Twitter Feed].

== Pictures and Video ==

== Data ==

=== Accelerometer ===

For now, here is the raw accelerometer data: [[Media: spaceblimp5_accelerometer.csv.gz]]

Analysis to come in the next few days....

=== Flight Tracker ===

== Launch Plans ==
{| {{Prettytable|width=600px}}
!align="right"| Planned launch date:
| Saturday, July 9, 2011
|-
!align="right"| Launch time:
| 10:00 AM, Launch should take less than an hour.
|-
!align="right" valign="top"| Launch Location:
|
Strasburg, VA
|-
!align="right"| Coordination/Talk-in:
| 146.685 MHz simplex (this might change, please monitor Twitter (@HacDCSpaceblimp) and mailing list for updates.
|-
!align="right"| Planned Altitude:
| 120,000 Feet
|-
!align="right"| Planned Ascent Rate:
| 1,000 feet/minute
|-
!align="right"| Planned Descent Rate:
| 1,000 feet/minute
|-
!align="right"| Primary Beacon:
| Son-of-WhereAVR with ublox GPS. Yaesu VX-1 handi-talkie with 1 W Transmitter, call sign W3HAC-11 ([http://aprs.fi/?call=W3HAC-11 map]), Frequency 144.390 MHz
|-
!align="right"| Secondary Beacon:
| GSM mobile phone modue, uBlox GPS
|-
!align="right"| Payload:
| 9 DOF IMU, Geiger counter, temperature, pressure, humidity, and light sensors
|}

== Payload ==

The payload contains a couple cameras:

* a video camera (Canon Zi6)
* a still camera (Canon Powershot A-480) running custom firmware to get better exposures from space

and a lot of instrumentation:

* a geiger counter
* 9 degree-of-freedom IMU ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_measurement_unit Inertial Measurement Unit on Wikipedia])
* high-speed (50 sample/sec) accelerometer
* internal and external temperature sensors
* humidity sensor
* air pressure sensor
* IR and visible light sensors
* a solar panel, hooked up to measure the voltage

{{Template:Spaceblimp}}
[[Category:Spaceblimp]]

HacDC Spaceblimp 5

2011-07-11T15:28:53Z

Hexagon5un: /* Summary */

[[Image: sb5_IMG_9220.JPG | 500 px]]

Spaceblimp-5 Launched: July 9, 2011

== Summary ==

This time we were going for altitude, and we got it! The max recorded altitude was 118,533 ft!

The launch site was: Strasburg VA, in a open area near the town on Rt 11, near the I-81.
Lat: 38.9968 N
Lon: 78.3508W

[[Image: sb5_launch_still.jpg | 320 px]] [[Image: sb5_track.jpg | 500 px]]

There were two radios on board the blimp that transmitted out the GPS data:

* The primary radio was tied to the GPS and transmitted out to a network of amateur radio enthusiasts who then passed the location information on to get mapped here: [http://aprs.fi/?call=W3HAC-11 APRS.fi]. We also ran some custom software that passes this data on to a Twitter account (once per minute!) which you could follow on your phone: [http://twitter.com/#!/DCSpaceblimp DC Spaceblimp Primary Twitter Feed]. (Click the link in the Twitter to pull up a map!)

* The secondary radio was actually a GSM cell phone module, and broadcasted its data when in range of a cell tower. It broadcasted both GPS data for tracking, and a lot of the sensor data for science. It also twittered through [http://twitter.com/#!/SocietyofRobotz Society Of Robots Twitter Feed].

== Pictures and Video ==

== Data ==

=== Accelerometer ===

For now, here is the raw accelerometer data: [[Media: spaceblimp5_accelerometer.csv.gz]]

Analysis to come in the next few days....

=== Flight Tracker ===

== Launch Plans ==
{| {{Prettytable|width=600px}}
!align="right"| Planned launch date:
| Saturday, July 9, 2011
|-
!align="right"| Launch time:
| 10:00 AM, Launch should take less than an hour.
|-
!align="right" valign="top"| Launch Location:
|
Strasburg, VA
|-
!align="right"| Coordination/Talk-in:
| 146.685 MHz simplex (this might change, please monitor Twitter (@HacDCSpaceblimp) and mailing list for updates.
|-
!align="right"| Planned Altitude:
| 120,000 Feet
|-
!align="right"| Planned Ascent Rate:
| 1,000 feet/minute
|-
!align="right"| Planned Descent Rate:
| 1,000 feet/minute
|-
!align="right"| Primary Beacon:
| Son-of-WhereAVR with ublox GPS. Yaesu VX-1 handi-talkie with 1 W Transmitter, call sign W3HAC-11 ([http://aprs.fi/?call=W3HAC-11 map]), Frequency 144.390 MHz
|-
!align="right"| Secondary Beacon:
| GSM mobile phone modue, uBlox GPS
|-
!align="right"| Payload:
| 9 DOF IMU, Geiger counter, temperature, pressure, humidity, and light sensors
|}

== Payload ==

The payload contains a couple cameras:

* a video camera (Canon Zi6)
* a still camera (Canon Powershot A-480) running custom firmware to get better exposures from space

and a lot of instrumentation:

* a geiger counter
* 9 degree-of-freedom IMU ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_measurement_unit Inertial Measurement Unit on Wikipedia])
* high-speed (50 sample/sec) accelerometer
* internal and external temperature sensors
* humidity sensor
* air pressure sensor
* IR and visible light sensors
* a solar panel, hooked up to measure the voltage

{{Template:Spaceblimp}}
[[Category:Spaceblimp]]

HacDC Spaceblimp 5

2011-07-10T02:50:03Z

Hexagon5un: /* Summary */

[[Image: sb5_IMG_9220.JPG | 500 px]]

Spaceblimp-5 Launched: July 9, 2011

== Summary ==

This time we were going for altitude. By using a larger balloon, hopefully it will burst at a higher altitude, 120k feet predicted. (117k actual. Within 3%. Not too shabby!!)

The launch site was: Strasburg VA, in a open area near the town on Rt 11, near the I-81.
Lat: 38.9968 N
Lon: 78.3508W

[[Image: sb5_launch_still.jpg | 320 px]] [[Image: sb5_track.jpg | 500 px]]

There were two radios on board the blimp that transmitted out the GPS data:

* The primary radio was tied to the GPS and transmitted out to a network of amateur radio enthusiasts who then passed the location information on to get mapped here: [http://aprs.fi/?call=W3HAC-11 APRS.fi]. We also ran some custom software that passes this data on to a Twitter account (once per minute!) which you could follow on your phone: [http://twitter.com/#!/DCSpaceblimp DC Spaceblimp Primary Twitter Feed]. (Click the link in the Twitter to pull up a map!)

* The secondary radio was actually a GSM cell phone module, and broadcasted its data when in range of a cell tower. It broadcasted both GPS data for tracking, and a lot of the sensor data for science. It also twittered through [http://twitter.com/#!/SocietyofRobotz Society Of Robots Twitter Feed].

== Pictures and Video ==

== Data ==

=== Accelerometer ===

For now, here is the raw accelerometer data: [[Media: spaceblimp5_accelerometer.csv.gz]]

Analysis to come in the next few days....

=== Flight Tracker ===

== Launch Plans ==
{| {{Prettytable|width=600px}}
!align="right"| Planned launch date:
| Saturday, July 9, 2011
|-
!align="right"| Launch time:
| 10:00 AM, Launch should take less than an hour.
|-
!align="right" valign="top"| Launch Location:
|
Strasburg, VA
|-
!align="right"| Coordination/Talk-in:
| 146.685 MHz simplex (this might change, please monitor Twitter (@HacDCSpaceblimp) and mailing list for updates.
|-
!align="right"| Planned Altitude:
| 120,000 Feet
|-
!align="right"| Planned Ascent Rate:
| 1,000 feet/minute
|-
!align="right"| Planned Descent Rate:
| 1,000 feet/minute
|-
!align="right"| Primary Beacon:
| Son-of-WhereAVR with ublox GPS. Yaesu VX-1 handi-talkie with 1 W Transmitter, call sign W3HAC-11 ([http://aprs.fi/?call=W3HAC-11 map]), Frequency 144.390 MHz
|-
!align="right"| Secondary Beacon:
| GSM mobile phone modue, uBlox GPS
|-
!align="right"| Payload:
| 9 DOF IMU, Geiger counter, temperature, pressure, humidity, and light sensors
|}

== Payload ==

The payload contains a couple cameras:

* a video camera (Canon Zi6)
* a still camera (Canon Powershot A-480) running custom firmware to get better exposures from space

and a lot of instrumentation:

* a geiger counter
* 9 degree-of-freedom IMU ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_measurement_unit Inertial Measurement Unit on Wikipedia])
* high-speed (50 sample/sec) accelerometer
* internal and external temperature sensors
* humidity sensor
* air pressure sensor
* IR and visible light sensors
* a solar panel, hooked up to measure the voltage

{{Template:Spaceblimp}}
[[Category:Spaceblimp]]

HacDC Spaceblimp 5

2011-07-10T02:49:27Z

Hexagon5un: /* Summary */

File:Sb5 track.jpg

2011-07-10T02:48:37Z

Hexagon5un:

HacDC Spaceblimp 5

2011-07-10T02:48:10Z

Hexagon5un: /* Summary */

[[Image: sb5_IMG_9220.JPG | 500 px]]

Spaceblimp-5 Launched: July 9, 2011

== Summary ==

This time we were going for altitude. By using a larger balloon, hopefully it will burst at a higher altitude, 120k feet predicted. (117k actual. Within 3%. Not too shabby!!)

The launch site was: Strasburg VA, in a open area near the town on Rt 11, near the I-81.
Lat: 38.9968 N
Lon: 78.3508W

[[Image: sb5_launch_still.jpg | 300 px]] [[Image: sb5_track.jpg | 500 px]]

There were two radios on board the blimp that transmitted out the GPS data:

* The primary radio was tied to the GPS and transmitted out to a network of amateur radio enthusiasts who then passed the location information on to get mapped here: [http://aprs.fi/?call=W3HAC-11 APRS.fi]. We also ran some custom software that passes this data on to a Twitter account (once per minute!) which you could follow on your phone: [http://twitter.com/#!/DCSpaceblimp DC Spaceblimp Primary Twitter Feed]. (Click the link in the Twitter to pull up a map!)

* The secondary radio was actually a GSM cell phone module, and broadcasted its data when in range of a cell tower. It broadcasted both GPS data for tracking, and a lot of the sensor data for science. It also twittered through [http://twitter.com/#!/SocietyofRobotz Society Of Robots Twitter Feed].

== Pictures and Video ==

== Data ==

=== Accelerometer ===

For now, here is the raw accelerometer data: [[Media: spaceblimp5_accelerometer.csv.gz]]

Analysis to come in the next few days....

=== Flight Tracker ===

== Launch Plans ==
{| {{Prettytable|width=600px}}
!align="right"| Planned launch date:
| Saturday, July 9, 2011
|-
!align="right"| Launch time:
| 10:00 AM, Launch should take less than an hour.
|-
!align="right" valign="top"| Launch Location:
|
Strasburg, VA
|-
!align="right"| Coordination/Talk-in:
| 146.685 MHz simplex (this might change, please monitor Twitter (@HacDCSpaceblimp) and mailing list for updates.
|-
!align="right"| Planned Altitude:
| 120,000 Feet
|-
!align="right"| Planned Ascent Rate:
| 1,000 feet/minute
|-
!align="right"| Planned Descent Rate:
| 1,000 feet/minute
|-
!align="right"| Primary Beacon:
| Son-of-WhereAVR with ublox GPS. Yaesu VX-1 handi-talkie with 1 W Transmitter, call sign W3HAC-11 ([http://aprs.fi/?call=W3HAC-11 map]), Frequency 144.390 MHz
|-
!align="right"| Secondary Beacon:
| GSM mobile phone modue, uBlox GPS
|-
!align="right"| Payload:
| 9 DOF IMU, Geiger counter, temperature, pressure, humidity, and light sensors
|}

== Payload ==

The payload contains a couple cameras:

* a video camera (Canon Zi6)
* a still camera (Canon Powershot A-480) running custom firmware to get better exposures from space

and a lot of instrumentation:

* a geiger counter
* 9 degree-of-freedom IMU ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_measurement_unit Inertial Measurement Unit on Wikipedia])
* high-speed (50 sample/sec) accelerometer
* internal and external temperature sensors
* humidity sensor
* air pressure sensor
* IR and visible light sensors
* a solar panel, hooked up to measure the voltage

{{Template:Spaceblimp}}
[[Category:Spaceblimp]]

HacDC Spaceblimp 5

2011-07-10T02:45:45Z

Hexagon5un: /* Summary */

[[Image: sb5_IMG_9220.JPG | 500 px]]

Spaceblimp-5 Launched: July 9, 2011

== Summary ==

This time we were going for altitude. By using a larger balloon, hopefully it will burst at a higher altitude, 120k feet predicted. (117k actual. Within 3%. Not too shabby!!)

The launch site was: Strasburg VA, in a open area near the town on Rt 11, near the I-81.
Lat: 38.9968 N
Lon: 78.3508W

[[Image: sb5_launch_still.jpg | 500 px]]

There were two radios on board the blimp that transmitted out the GPS data:

* The primary radio was tied to the GPS and transmitted out to a network of amateur radio enthusiasts who then passed the location information on to get mapped here: [http://aprs.fi/?call=W3HAC-11 APRS.fi]. We also ran some custom software that passes this data on to a Twitter account (once per minute!) which you could follow on your phone: [http://twitter.com/#!/DCSpaceblimp DC Spaceblimp Primary Twitter Feed]. (Click the link in the Twitter to pull up a map!)

* The secondary radio was actually a GSM cell phone module, and broadcasted its data when in range of a cell tower. It broadcasted both GPS data for tracking, and a lot of the sensor data for science. It also twittered through [http://twitter.com/#!/SocietyofRobotz Society Of Robots Twitter Feed].

== Pictures and Video ==

== Data ==

=== Accelerometer ===

For now, here is the raw accelerometer data: [[Media: spaceblimp5_accelerometer.csv.gz]]

Analysis to come in the next few days....

=== Flight Tracker ===

== Launch Plans ==
{| {{Prettytable|width=600px}}
!align="right"| Planned launch date:
| Saturday, July 9, 2011
|-
!align="right"| Launch time:
| 10:00 AM, Launch should take less than an hour.
|-
!align="right" valign="top"| Launch Location:
|
Strasburg, VA
|-
!align="right"| Coordination/Talk-in:
| 146.685 MHz simplex (this might change, please monitor Twitter (@HacDCSpaceblimp) and mailing list for updates.
|-
!align="right"| Planned Altitude:
| 120,000 Feet
|-
!align="right"| Planned Ascent Rate:
| 1,000 feet/minute
|-
!align="right"| Planned Descent Rate:
| 1,000 feet/minute
|-
!align="right"| Primary Beacon:
| Son-of-WhereAVR with ublox GPS. Yaesu VX-1 handi-talkie with 1 W Transmitter, call sign W3HAC-11 ([http://aprs.fi/?call=W3HAC-11 map]), Frequency 144.390 MHz
|-
!align="right"| Secondary Beacon:
| GSM mobile phone modue, uBlox GPS
|-
!align="right"| Payload:
| 9 DOF IMU, Geiger counter, temperature, pressure, humidity, and light sensors
|}

== Payload ==

The payload contains a couple cameras:

* a video camera (Canon Zi6)
* a still camera (Canon Powershot A-480) running custom firmware to get better exposures from space

and a lot of instrumentation:

* a geiger counter
* 9 degree-of-freedom IMU ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_measurement_unit Inertial Measurement Unit on Wikipedia])
* high-speed (50 sample/sec) accelerometer
* internal and external temperature sensors
* humidity sensor
* air pressure sensor
* IR and visible light sensors
* a solar panel, hooked up to measure the voltage

{{Template:Spaceblimp}}
[[Category:Spaceblimp]]

HacDC Spaceblimp 5

2011-07-10T02:43:47Z

Hexagon5un:

[[Image: sb5_IMG_9220.JPG | 500 px]]

Spaceblimp-5 Launched: July 9, 2011

== Summary ==

This time we were going for altitude. By using a larger balloon, hopefully it will burst at a higher altitude, 120k feet predicted. (117k actual. Within 3%. Not too shabby!!)

The launch site was: Strasburg VA, in a open area near the town on Rt 11, near the I-81.
Lat: 38.9968 N
Lon: 78.3508W

[[Image: sb5_launch_still.jpg | 500 px]]

Or follow along at home! There are two radios on board the blimp that transmit out the GPS data:

* The primary radio is tied to the GPS and transmits out to a network of amateur radio enthusiasts who then pass the location information on to get mapped here: [http://aprs.fi/?call=W3HAC-11 APRS.fi]. We also are running some custom software that passes this data on to a Twitter account (once per minute!) which you can follow on your phone: [http://twitter.com/#!/DCSpaceblimp DC Spaceblimp Primary Twitter Feed]. (Click the link in the Twitter to pull up a map!)

* The secondary radio is actually a GSM cell phone module, and will broadcast its data when in range of a cell tower. It will be broadcasting both GPS data for tracking, and a lot of the sensor data for science. You can follow that Twitter feed through [http://twitter.com/#!/SocietyofRobotz Society Of Robots Twitter Feed].

== Pictures and Video ==

== Data ==

=== Accelerometer ===

For now, here is the raw accelerometer data: [[Media: spaceblimp5_accelerometer.csv.gz]]

Analysis to come in the next few days....

=== Flight Tracker ===

== Launch Plans ==
{| {{Prettytable|width=600px}}
!align="right"| Planned launch date:
| Saturday, July 9, 2011
|-
!align="right"| Launch time:
| 10:00 AM, Launch should take less than an hour.
|-
!align="right" valign="top"| Launch Location:
|
Strasburg, VA
|-
!align="right"| Coordination/Talk-in:
| 146.685 MHz simplex (this might change, please monitor Twitter (@HacDCSpaceblimp) and mailing list for updates.
|-
!align="right"| Planned Altitude:
| 120,000 Feet
|-
!align="right"| Planned Ascent Rate:
| 1,000 feet/minute
|-
!align="right"| Planned Descent Rate:
| 1,000 feet/minute
|-
!align="right"| Primary Beacon:
| Son-of-WhereAVR with ublox GPS. Yaesu VX-1 handi-talkie with 1 W Transmitter, call sign W3HAC-11 ([http://aprs.fi/?call=W3HAC-11 map]), Frequency 144.390 MHz
|-
!align="right"| Secondary Beacon:
| GSM mobile phone modue, uBlox GPS
|-
!align="right"| Payload:
| 9 DOF IMU, Geiger counter, temperature, pressure, humidity, and light sensors
|}

== Payload ==

The payload contains a couple cameras:

* a video camera (Canon Zi6)
* a still camera (Canon Powershot A-480) running custom firmware to get better exposures from space

and a lot of instrumentation:

* a geiger counter
* 9 degree-of-freedom IMU ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_measurement_unit Inertial Measurement Unit on Wikipedia])
* high-speed (50 sample/sec) accelerometer
* internal and external temperature sensors
* humidity sensor
* air pressure sensor
* IR and visible light sensors
* a solar panel, hooked up to measure the voltage

{{Template:Spaceblimp}}
[[Category:Spaceblimp]]

HacDC Spaceblimp 5

2011-07-10T02:43:03Z

Hexagon5un: /* Pictures */

[[Image: sb5_IMG_9220.JPG | 500 px]]

Spaceblimp-5 Launched: July 9, 2011

== Summary ==

This time we were going for altitude. By using a larger balloon, hopefully it will burst at a higher altitude, 120k feet predicted. (117k actual. Within 3%. Not too shabby!!)

The launch site was: Strasburg VA, in a open area near the town on Rt 11, near the I-81.
Lat: 38.9968 N
Lon: 78.3508W

[[Image: sb5_launch_still.jpg | 500 px]]

Or follow along at home! There are two radios on board the blimp that transmit out the GPS data:

* The primary radio is tied to the GPS and transmits out to a network of amateur radio enthusiasts who then pass the location information on to get mapped here: [http://aprs.fi/?call=W3HAC-11 APRS.fi]. We also are running some custom software that passes this data on to a Twitter account (once per minute!) which you can follow on your phone: [http://twitter.com/#!/DCSpaceblimp DC Spaceblimp Primary Twitter Feed]. (Click the link in the Twitter to pull up a map!)

* The secondary radio is actually a GSM cell phone module, and will broadcast its data when in range of a cell tower. It will be broadcasting both GPS data for tracking, and a lot of the sensor data for science. You can follow that Twitter feed through [http://twitter.com/#!/SocietyofRobotz Society Of Robots Twitter Feed].

== Payload ==

The payload contains a couple cameras:

* a video camera (Canon Zi6)
* a still camera (Canon Powershot A-480) running custom firmware to get better exposures from space

and a lot of instrumentation:

* a geiger counter
* 9 degree-of-freedom IMU ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_measurement_unit Inertial Measurement Unit on Wikipedia])
* high-speed (50 sample/sec) accelerometer
* internal and external temperature sensors
* humidity sensor
* air pressure sensor
* IR and visible light sensors
* a solar panel, hooked up to measure the voltage

== Pictures and Video ==

== Data ==

=== Accelerometer ===

For now, here is the raw accelerometer data: [[Media: spaceblimp5_accelerometer.csv.gz]]

Analysis to come in the next few days....

=== Flight Tracker ===

== Launch Plans ==
{| {{Prettytable|width=600px}}
!align="right"| Planned launch date:
| Saturday, July 9, 2011
|-
!align="right"| Launch time:
| 10:00 AM, Launch should take less than an hour.
|-
!align="right" valign="top"| Launch Location:
|
Strasburg, VA
|-
!align="right"| Coordination/Talk-in:
| 146.685 MHz simplex (this might change, please monitor Twitter (@HacDCSpaceblimp) and mailing list for updates.
|-
!align="right"| Planned Altitude:
| 120,000 Feet
|-
!align="right"| Planned Ascent Rate:
| 1,000 feet/minute
|-
!align="right"| Planned Descent Rate:
| 1,000 feet/minute
|-
!align="right"| Primary Beacon:
| Son-of-WhereAVR with ublox GPS. Yaesu VX-1 handi-talkie with 1 W Transmitter, call sign W3HAC-11 ([http://aprs.fi/?call=W3HAC-11 map]), Frequency 144.390 MHz
|-
!align="right"| Secondary Beacon:
| GSM mobile phone modue, uBlox GPS
|-
!align="right"| Payload:
| 9 DOF IMU, Geiger counter, temperature, pressure, humidity, and light sensors
|}

{{Template:Spaceblimp}}
[[Category:Spaceblimp]]

HacDC Spaceblimp 5

2011-07-10T02:42:41Z

Hexagon5un:

[[Image: sb5_IMG_9220.JPG | 500 px]]

Spaceblimp-5 Launched: July 9, 2011

== Summary ==

This time we were going for altitude. By using a larger balloon, hopefully it will burst at a higher altitude, 120k feet predicted. (117k actual. Within 3%. Not too shabby!!)

The launch site was: Strasburg VA, in a open area near the town on Rt 11, near the I-81.
Lat: 38.9968 N
Lon: 78.3508W

[[Image: sb5_launch_still.jpg | 500 px]]

Or follow along at home! There are two radios on board the blimp that transmit out the GPS data:

* The primary radio is tied to the GPS and transmits out to a network of amateur radio enthusiasts who then pass the location information on to get mapped here: [http://aprs.fi/?call=W3HAC-11 APRS.fi]. We also are running some custom software that passes this data on to a Twitter account (once per minute!) which you can follow on your phone: [http://twitter.com/#!/DCSpaceblimp DC Spaceblimp Primary Twitter Feed]. (Click the link in the Twitter to pull up a map!)

* The secondary radio is actually a GSM cell phone module, and will broadcast its data when in range of a cell tower. It will be broadcasting both GPS data for tracking, and a lot of the sensor data for science. You can follow that Twitter feed through [http://twitter.com/#!/SocietyofRobotz Society Of Robots Twitter Feed].

== Payload ==

The payload contains a couple cameras:

* a video camera (Canon Zi6)
* a still camera (Canon Powershot A-480) running custom firmware to get better exposures from space

and a lot of instrumentation:

* a geiger counter
* 9 degree-of-freedom IMU ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_measurement_unit Inertial Measurement Unit on Wikipedia])
* high-speed (50 sample/sec) accelerometer
* internal and external temperature sensors
* humidity sensor
* air pressure sensor
* IR and visible light sensors
* a solar panel, hooked up to measure the voltage

== Pictures ==

== Data ==

=== Accelerometer ===

For now, here is the raw accelerometer data: [[Media: spaceblimp5_accelerometer.csv.gz]]

Analysis to come in the next few days....

=== Flight Tracker ===

== Launch Plans ==
{| {{Prettytable|width=600px}}
!align="right"| Planned launch date:
| Saturday, July 9, 2011
|-
!align="right"| Launch time:
| 10:00 AM, Launch should take less than an hour.
|-
!align="right" valign="top"| Launch Location:
|
Strasburg, VA
|-
!align="right"| Coordination/Talk-in:
| 146.685 MHz simplex (this might change, please monitor Twitter (@HacDCSpaceblimp) and mailing list for updates.
|-
!align="right"| Planned Altitude:
| 120,000 Feet
|-
!align="right"| Planned Ascent Rate:
| 1,000 feet/minute
|-
!align="right"| Planned Descent Rate:
| 1,000 feet/minute
|-
!align="right"| Primary Beacon:
| Son-of-WhereAVR with ublox GPS. Yaesu VX-1 handi-talkie with 1 W Transmitter, call sign W3HAC-11 ([http://aprs.fi/?call=W3HAC-11 map]), Frequency 144.390 MHz
|-
!align="right"| Secondary Beacon:
| GSM mobile phone modue, uBlox GPS
|-
!align="right"| Payload:
| 9 DOF IMU, Geiger counter, temperature, pressure, humidity, and light sensors
|}

{{Template:Spaceblimp}}
[[Category:Spaceblimp]]

File:Spaceblimp5 accelerometer.csv.gz

2011-07-10T02:41:44Z

Hexagon5un:

HacDC Spaceblimp 5

2011-07-10T02:41:05Z

Hexagon5un: /* Accelerometer */

[[Image: sb5_IMG_9220.JPG | 500 px]]

Spaceblimp-5 Launched: July 9, 2011

== Summary ==

This time we were going for altitude. By using a larger balloon, hopefully it will burst at a higher altitude, 120k feet predicted. (117k actual. Within 3%. Not too shabby!!)

The launch site was: Strasburg VA, in a open area near the town on Rt 11, near the I-81.
Lat: 38.9968 N
Lon: 78.3508W

[[Image: sb5_launch_still.jpg | 500 px]]

Or follow along at home! There are two radios on board the blimp that transmit out the GPS data:

* The primary radio is tied to the GPS and transmits out to a network of amateur radio enthusiasts who then pass the location information on to get mapped here: [http://aprs.fi/?call=W3HAC-11 APRS.fi]. We also are running some custom software that passes this data on to a Twitter account (once per minute!) which you can follow on your phone: [http://twitter.com/#!/DCSpaceblimp DC Spaceblimp Primary Twitter Feed]. (Click the link in the Twitter to pull up a map!)

* The secondary radio is actually a GSM cell phone module, and will broadcast its data when in range of a cell tower. It will be broadcasting both GPS data for tracking, and a lot of the sensor data for science. You can follow that Twitter feed through [http://twitter.com/#!/SocietyofRobotz Society Of Robots Twitter Feed].

== Payload ==

The payload contains a couple cameras:

* a video camera (Canon Zi6)
* a still camera (Canon Powershot A-480) running custom firmware to get better exposures from space

and a lot of instrumentation:

* a geiger counter
* 9 degree-of-freedom IMU ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_measurement_unit Inertial Measurement Unit on Wikipedia])
* high-speed (50 sample/sec) accelerometer
* internal and external temperature sensors
* humidity sensor
* air pressure sensor
* IR and visible light sensors
* a solar panel, hooked up to measure the voltage

== Data ==

=== Accelerometer ===

For now, here is the raw accelerometer data: [[Media: spaceblimp5_accelerometer.csv.gz]]

Analysis to come in the next few days....

=== Flight Tracker ===

== Launch Plans ==
{| {{Prettytable|width=600px}}
!align="right"| Planned launch date:
| Saturday, July 9, 2011
|-
!align="right"| Launch time:
| 10:00 AM, Launch should take less than an hour.
|-
!align="right" valign="top"| Launch Location:
|
Strasburg, VA
|-
!align="right"| Coordination/Talk-in:
| 146.685 MHz simplex (this might change, please monitor Twitter (@HacDCSpaceblimp) and mailing list for updates.
|-
!align="right"| Planned Altitude:
| 120,000 Feet
|-
!align="right"| Planned Ascent Rate:
| 1,000 feet/minute
|-
!align="right"| Planned Descent Rate:
| 1,000 feet/minute
|-
!align="right"| Primary Beacon:
| Son-of-WhereAVR with ublox GPS. Yaesu VX-1 handi-talkie with 1 W Transmitter, call sign W3HAC-11 ([http://aprs.fi/?call=W3HAC-11 map]), Frequency 144.390 MHz
|-
!align="right"| Secondary Beacon:
| GSM mobile phone modue, uBlox GPS
|-
!align="right"| Payload:
| 9 DOF IMU, Geiger counter, temperature, pressure, humidity, and light sensors
|}

{{Template:Spaceblimp}}
[[Category:Spaceblimp]]

HacDC Spaceblimp 5

2011-07-10T02:40:43Z

Hexagon5un: /* Accelerometer */

[[Image: sb5_IMG_9220.JPG | 500 px]]

Spaceblimp-5 Launched: July 9, 2011

== Summary ==

This time we were going for altitude. By using a larger balloon, hopefully it will burst at a higher altitude, 120k feet predicted. (117k actual. Within 3%. Not too shabby!!)

The launch site was: Strasburg VA, in a open area near the town on Rt 11, near the I-81.
Lat: 38.9968 N
Lon: 78.3508W

[[Image: sb5_launch_still.jpg | 500 px]]

Or follow along at home! There are two radios on board the blimp that transmit out the GPS data:

* The primary radio is tied to the GPS and transmits out to a network of amateur radio enthusiasts who then pass the location information on to get mapped here: [http://aprs.fi/?call=W3HAC-11 APRS.fi]. We also are running some custom software that passes this data on to a Twitter account (once per minute!) which you can follow on your phone: [http://twitter.com/#!/DCSpaceblimp DC Spaceblimp Primary Twitter Feed]. (Click the link in the Twitter to pull up a map!)

* The secondary radio is actually a GSM cell phone module, and will broadcast its data when in range of a cell tower. It will be broadcasting both GPS data for tracking, and a lot of the sensor data for science. You can follow that Twitter feed through [http://twitter.com/#!/SocietyofRobotz Society Of Robots Twitter Feed].

== Payload ==

The payload contains a couple cameras:

* a video camera (Canon Zi6)
* a still camera (Canon Powershot A-480) running custom firmware to get better exposures from space

and a lot of instrumentation:

* a geiger counter
* 9 degree-of-freedom IMU ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_measurement_unit Inertial Measurement Unit on Wikipedia])
* high-speed (50 sample/sec) accelerometer
* internal and external temperature sensors
* humidity sensor
* air pressure sensor
* IR and visible light sensors
* a solar panel, hooked up to measure the voltage

== Data ==

=== Accelerometer ===

For now, here is the raw accelerometer data: [Media: spaceblimp5_accelerometer.csv.gz]

Analysis to come in the next few days....

=== Flight Tracker ===

== Launch Plans ==
{| {{Prettytable|width=600px}}
!align="right"| Planned launch date:
| Saturday, July 9, 2011
|-
!align="right"| Launch time:
| 10:00 AM, Launch should take less than an hour.
|-
!align="right" valign="top"| Launch Location:
|
Strasburg, VA
|-
!align="right"| Coordination/Talk-in:
| 146.685 MHz simplex (this might change, please monitor Twitter (@HacDCSpaceblimp) and mailing list for updates.
|-
!align="right"| Planned Altitude:
| 120,000 Feet
|-
!align="right"| Planned Ascent Rate:
| 1,000 feet/minute
|-
!align="right"| Planned Descent Rate:
| 1,000 feet/minute
|-
!align="right"| Primary Beacon:
| Son-of-WhereAVR with ublox GPS. Yaesu VX-1 handi-talkie with 1 W Transmitter, call sign W3HAC-11 ([http://aprs.fi/?call=W3HAC-11 map]), Frequency 144.390 MHz
|-
!align="right"| Secondary Beacon:
| GSM mobile phone modue, uBlox GPS
|-
!align="right"| Payload:
| 9 DOF IMU, Geiger counter, temperature, pressure, humidity, and light sensors
|}

{{Template:Spaceblimp}}
[[Category:Spaceblimp]]