Camera Ready to Go

Total weight of the camera with its battery pack and power regulator is 314g.

Mark is going to figure out a way to mount the odd shaped camera in the container, cut the container down to size and weigh everything else.

I need to test the aprs beacon with my laptop and new car gps to make sure everything is kosher. My car gps should be able to track the balloon while its moving and update the directions to it, which will be nice while driving.

I was also thinking of coming up with a check-list for launch so we don't miss any steps.

Camera Ready

Finally figured out the camera problems I was having. When the camera was first turned on to record, it created a spike which overload my anyvolt micro. This caused a momentary drop off in the voltage which caused the camera to stop recording. I replaced the any volt with the larger version and it mainted the load. I also had to use a 8AA battery pack and got over 3.5 hours of recording. That was with alkaline batteries, with lithium it should last even longer. The disadvantage is the weight. We are going to have 16 batteries on board now. 8 on the Camera, 8 for the aprs/gps beacon.

Camera battery test

Well turns out the camera did not last long enough in my test last night. I had a fully charged camera battery, plus an external 4 AA battery pack plugged into the USB port. It only lasted about 2hrs 10mins. I'm going to try and replace the battery directly with the 4AA battery pack and see what that does...

Finally a Balloon update....

Finally started moving on Balloon flight 3. Actually ordered Styrofoam containers to use as a payload box. I have four, so plenty of chances to mess up. They are taller then I really want, but I can just cut off the top and it will make a nice payload container.

After much soldering and messing up, I have an external battery pack of 4AA's that will power the 5v usb input of the 720p video camera. The whole camera and battery pack weights 427g.

I'll point the camera at a clock tonight and run it until the battery dies. That will tell me how long it will run, the max size of the mov file (it has a 16Gb card). It will also tell me how the camera handles the power dropping out while recording.

Finding Sarah Conner

Finished off the mousebot last night. It is a failly easy solding job to put it all together. Had the daughter help, but she got bored.... We tried it out briefly - it was very fast and did not seem to follow the flashlight. Not sure if it was not working correctly or not as I managed to slam it into the wall hard enough to break off one of its 'eyes'. I need to fix that and try again.

Finished a simple robot with the VEX kit. I'm going to have to change it to get more torque and also add on a arm. Its not a robot without an arm! Not sure if I should use tank treads or wheels...

Also got my shiny new HD camcorder. I'm going to try and cut a mounting hole in my canopy on the EasyStar plane and try to take some HD video while flying.

Robots!

I ordered a mousebot from Make yesterday. Going to put it together with the Daughter. Nothing says nerd family more then soldering with the kids.

I also need to break out the Vex robot parts I have and make a robot with the video camera transmitter attached - good times chasing the cat around / finding Sarah Conner.

FPV anyone?

I tried some FPV flying of the easystar last week. I lost total control of the plane very shortly after takeoff. I got lucky and the plane was already in a gentle turn and just drifted right back and landed. No damage. I'm thinking it was because the video transmitter is located too close to the receiver and drastically reduced the ability of the receiver to pick up the signal. I've ordered a short sma cable to move the antenna for the video transmitter to the back of the plane. That way the receiver and transmitter will be separated as much as possible.

We are already thinking about balloon flight 3. This time we want to do HD video. One long video of the entire flight of the balloon. This should be pretty easy as they now have 720P solid state video cameras that are actually pretty cheap. We were also thinking of some sort of cut down device - perhaps triggered via a RC transmitter. This would have saved us alot of trouble when the last package got stuck in the tree. Not sure about the mechanics of how the line/lines are cut yet. We are thinking of launching in the Fall when it is cooler. This should help with the picture as the air will not be so hazy - also we should not have the lens fog problem on the way down if the temperature is cold.