's Project LOABN - Outdoor Escapade goes to space!
We came across this idea last year in 2010. We talked about it for a couple months but nothing ever came of it. We wanted to send a camera up to space, take some pictures and stick em up on the wall. How neat would that be right? Well this year while there is still a few feet off the ground we decided to take on the challenge. After brainstorming a super cool name we could call our project, our creative minds came up with Project LOABN. Which effectively stands for "Lack Of A Better Name", creative... I know. Neither of us are very smart when it comes to circuitry which seems to be the basis of all the advanced tracking folks are imploying to track there balloons. With that in mind this build will try to keep it simple, cost effective and easy to follow. Feel free to contact us with any questions you might have!
February - 12 - 2011
Balloon Radar Reflector Build
This day we have decided to tackle the radar reflector. It is going to be positioned about halfway between the balloon and the SPOT ball at the very bottom end. Roughly centre of mass. This is to allow anything that uses radar to see the balloon on screen. Some of the common reflectors we have seen looking at other projects are to wrap the payload in something reflective, tangle something shiny under the parachute, or something similar to what we have going on here. The reason we have chose this type was that it closely mimics the commercial kind of reflector for unmanned balloons. It is light, has square sides to reflect the radar signals and is portable. The other bonus was that if we make it, its cheap. Tape shouldn't be more then 5 bucks at Home Depot and we can get cardboard at home. All this worked except aluminum tape costs $12 at Home Depot these days.
- Aluminum Foil Tape - $ 12 from Home Depot
- Cardboard - $Free
There are good instructions at instructables.com (click here for link) that are pretty easy to follow so we won't go into great detail here. Basically took some normal cardboard and cut it into 3 12" squares and tapped each side twice with the aluminum foil tape to have a bit thicker of a base for the signals to bounce off of. These are then basically intersected into each other to make a 3D square. Comparing to the $40 + shipping commercial ones, I think it turned out well. Its also a LOT lighter then the metal ones for small boats or balloons as well.
February - 07 - 2011
Hamster / SPOT Ball Build
We finished off the last time with the ball but we were not completly satisfied with how well it worked and how secure the SPOT unit was attached inside. This time we cleaned out the holes and cut recessed grooves on the inner ring so that a set of zip ties could wrap around it tightly and not slip. We also filed down a nice groove on the opposite side of the inner ring so the SPOT unit tucks in there nicely.
With these little tweaks it works great, no matter where the ball rolls the SPOT unit is always facing upwards to the sky. Only thing that we would look into is stronger zip ties. These ones are rated to -40 celcius but it gets to about -55 celcius at around 100,000 feet.
February - 05 - 2011
Hamster / SPOT Ball Build
The picture is just a place holder at the moment. For the first day of our shopping adventure we decided to tackle the backup GPS unit that we are using for our balloon. The design is simple, basically a SPOT personal tracker surrounded by two gimbals inside a hampster ball. So no matter which way it rolls or lands its always facing upwards. A SPOT unit that is fairly commonly used outdoors as a personal locator. It has the advantage of running off satilites since it runs on GPS so if the cell phone fails to transmit its location or ends up somewhere out of the range of a cell tower we should be covered. The disadvantage is that it does not record altitude nor does it send out data constantly. It only updates its location every ten minutes and sends a message. We decided to follow the plans of University of California San Diego and there SPOT ball.
We also picked up a used Canon A530 for 40 bucks to use with CHDK (Canon Hack Development Kit). This allows us to run a script on the camera that will take a photo every X amount of seconds until the camera runs out of power or the memory card is full. Very usefull tool to Google and check out if you own a Canon camera.
- SPOT GPS - $70 from Kijiji
- Hampster Ball - $13 from PetSmart
- Tiny section of PVC pipe and nuts - $10
- Random nuts and bolts from garage - $Free
- Canon A530 - $40 from Kijiji
One problem we ran across when following the UCSD instructions of there ball was that ours just had too little spacing between all the rings and SPOT. Upon closer examination it looks like they hacked up pieces of the SPOT to make it fit better in there PVC ring. We did not want to do this as its a rather handy thing to use outdoors, especially if your going alone. The other thing was that they appear to be using a larger hampster ball. Since we tried to keep our costs down we made due with what we had. Instead of running the bar through the centre we simply used a 1/4" machine screw to hold the outer ring to the inner (easier to understand by looking at the picture). This allowed us to raise the SPOT more to the centre and give us a few more mm of clearance against the ring.
January - 28 - 2011
Near Space Build Mockup
The mockup we have made up is going to be built in a few out stages. We are starting off on the SPOT ball which is in its simplist form... a SPOT attached to two gimbals inside a hampster ball. The next stage we are tackling is most likely the camera and getting CHDK to function the way we want on it. From there its building and testing the payload that will surround the camera, phone, and all the other goodies in the payload box. The next step will be trying to get all the parts together for the balloon and parachute. We are planning to use a Kaymont KCI 1000 or 1200 for the balloon. RocketChutes makes pretty reliable and recomended parachutes but there $18 42" comes to 50 bucks with shipping to Canada so we might look elsewhere. The radar reflector will most likely be homemade as there are some good ones online for cheap comparing to the $30-40+ for commercial ones.
The FAA guidlines are another topic that we will get into at a later on in this build. It varies province/state/country but generally you are allowed 12lbs total weight with the balloon. No more then 6lbs per payload 'box', the guidlines attaching the units to the balloon should break with 50lbs of force applied, and there should be a radar reflector attached somewhere as well. Those are the summarized basics of what the guidlines are. Its good to inform the FAA a fair bit prior to launch and call the FSS immediatly prior so they can issue a Notice to Airmen.
