Nice one all - a very exciting day
but why is intrepid chasecam-girl not in the team photo?
The Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) team has just about recovered from last Saturday's successful test flight of the Special Project Electronic Altitude Release System (SPEARS) control board, which featured a dramatic attempt by our newly-recruited replacement Playmonaut to break the Paper Aircraft Released Into …
The Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) team has just about recovered from the celebrations in the pub after last Saturday's successful test flight of the Special Project Electronic Altitude Release System (SPEARS) control board
You missed a few words out? But certainly well earned success, and celebrations. A pint to you each and all, and especially our intrepid Playmonaut jr.
And stratodangle now has to enter the English language, or at least the project management language for when important projects which have risen to visibility at high altitudes in the management tree suddenly look to be going pear-shaped. Unfortunately I think it may apply to one I'm currently working on :(
The plan was to release the glider before burst, with a tethered line to pull a large 'chute out of the back of the fuselage. The small chute was to help make sure that happened. We had to ensure that the glider fell by parachute and didn't actually fly.
In the end the release mechanism didn't release the glider, so the whole lot came down together. 1.3kg of balloon came down with it to, so the tree-landing was a tad faster than we aimed for. Not that we aimed for a tree either :-)
I believe this is an artifact of the way the pixels are read off the CCD sensor --- that is, instead of taking a snapshot at a single instant, each column is read off in turn, which means that if the camera is moving, each one sees a slightly different angle and you get those weird wobbling artifacts. I'm sure it can be corrected in post to a certain extent but I doubt anyone will bother.
I'm curious, however, as to why the (undoubtly impressive and congratulation-worthy) CHAV video is glitchy. I'd have thought that if the Pi was working at all it would be recording smooth video, and if it was unable to record smooth video it was fail to work at all...
Also! Wot no undocking video? Or is this being saved for the documentary?
Yes the Earth concave/convex thing is down to the lens on the GoPro Hero 3 that took that video, popular for their ability to cram everything into the field of view. The downside of course is the enormous distortion, which is kind of OK in some stills but hideous when recording video of what should be a slightly curved Earth.
As for the Pi, the video part was a late addition. A script took small images during the launch phase, then larger images during flight (from 3km up, then down to 2km), and finally it ran a single 10 minute video for the landing before reverting to the small images again. The video part was the standard current Pi Cam software with no special parameters. Guess #1 is the SD card wasn't fast enough. Guess #2 is the processor was a tad busy (but was generally around 20% on the telemetry etc., which I'm guessing isn't enough to cause a problem). The jumps were visible when playing the video back on a Windows PC, as well as in the converted-to-mp4 version uploaded to Youtube.
yes, some (not many) GPS units correctly operate this way, but many stop if the velocity OR altitude limit is exceeded. Generally we use ublox modules which are known to work at high ltitudes (up to 50km which is higher than we can get our balloons), provided that we put them into "flight mode" first.
fantastic flight and pictures.
one thought,
from 35 Km up,
if you can make the glider glide at 4:1 ,
the glider could cover most the width of the UK,
you could gps it back to any landing place you wanted to ?
have a chat with James May ?
ok at altitude you would not not 4:1
but at lower altitude you should get better than 4:1
so average of 4:1 could be a good average ?
Said Blighty's launch provided oxygen to the Playmanaut so he could launch his vehicle back to earth at the required height. Said Yanky naut was too busy eating has fries with cheese to notice a distinct lack of oxygen and therefore failed.
"Houston we have a problem"
"Eh up, champion, we don't. Put kettle on me throat's gasping"
Watched that video through twice. On coming to the end of the 2nd rendition, I was thinking, now which government department did my taxes go to to for that and which advertising behemoth did that escapade ?
Quick reality check - El-Reg - all is right with the world !
I just love it when when backyard tinkering, care, some engineering know-how, genuine intuition and a fair amount of common sense, fun and beer make for a memorable experience, which beat the big boys hands down.
A really interesting project with great feedback - Well done to all involved - much appreciated.
(subject line has nothing to do with the content of the post - just an attention [de]grabber).