This fun project started with a call from a TV production company who were working on a series for Heston Blumenthal. They’d heard that I fly the Raspberry Pi and wanted to include it in their Pie episode. The idea was to fly a potato as that was the first […]
Read MorePaper Plane, Battery Drain And Then Ukraine
This was a pretty successful flight though it didn’t quite go to plan! It was a joint project with Anthony Stirk who has written it up here. The aim was to drop a paper plane over the North Sea, with that landing in Holland whilst the main payload continued on. […]
Read MorePi To Poland
Tomorrow (Saturday 28th December) I will be joined by Anthony Stirk to launch a Raspberry Pi “floater” which is expected to fly over the continent, over Holland, Germany and Poland, and probably beyond. The high-altitude winds this time of year are strong, and we’re expecting speeds of 200mph (320kph) or […]
Read MoreDriving a scrolling LED badge from a Raspberry Pi
For a while I’ve wanted to build a “Flight Readiness” unit that I can have near me when filling a balloon, and will show me if the tracker is running OK or if there’s a problem with the tracker or receiver (e.g. it may have drifted out of tune). To […]
Read MoreHAB-o-Cam – Raspberry Pi Video Streaming to batc.tv
I usually run a video stream from my launches, using webcam attached to a laptop or more recently with my Chase Car Pi, so that people following the flight can see what’s going on. Following a suggestion by Anthony Stirk, I decided to set up a second streaming camera which […]
Read MoreRaspberry Pi & Pint Talk
Last night I went into London to meet up with other Pi enthusiasts over a pint, and to do a talk about my Pi-based weather balloon activities. Thanks to Andy and Matt for organising it and inviting me! Here’s a pic from Andy of me in “action”: The talk seemed […]
Read MoreUpdate – Chase Car Raspberry Pi with GPS, Video Streaming
Following my previous post, I’ve now packaged up my Pi Chase Car system, using the new Raspberry Pi GPS Board from HAB Supplies. The original GPS receiver, purchased on ebay, just wasn’t up to the task of getting a good GPS signal inside a Raspberry Pi case. The HAB Supplies […]
Read MoreChase Car Raspberry Pi Computer
Chasing balloons across the country is one of the best, and probably the most exciting, parts of high altitude ballooning, using a car kitted out with aerials, radios and at least one computer to decode the radio transmissions from the balloon and show the balloon on a map. I have […]
Read MoreLOHAN Test Flight
I and the rest of The Register’s LOHAN team will be doing a test flight this Monday about 2pm local time. There will be a total of 4 trackers, one sending SSDV images, plus a batc video stream from the ground. Launch site is about 150km west of Madrid. We […]
Read MoreBear-Bones Computer Beats Red Bull Stratos
I’m delighted to report that, on the second attempt, Babbage the Bionic Bear was successfully dropped from just over 39,000 metres, with a video of the “jump” taken by the capsule camera, and with both payloads recovered. So all of the main mission objectives were achieved! The first attempt was […]
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