Dave Akerman

I’ve recently put my Maplin weather station back online, feeding data to wunderground.com.  This is a live object that links to the site to show the current local weather conditions: I bought mine from Maplin, where it is currently £99.99, however it is often substantially discounted during their sales.  It includes […]

Back in December I was approached by the BBC about launching a high altitude weather balloon flight during the forthcoming solar eclipse which was total over the Faroe Islands but approx 85-90% over much of the UK. After some discussion we planned the flight to be from Leicester Racecourse where […]

As promised, a link to my presentation yesterday at the Pi Party, plus some useful links (from the presentation) for those wanting to know more: Pi Party Presentation Links: www.ukhas.org.uk Successful Payload Recovery How To Lose Your Flight High Altitude Ballooning, From The Ground Up (and back again) Live Map […]

High Altitude Ballooning makes for a challenging project that sometimes turns into an engrossing hobby.  Whilst it’s not “rocket science” it does encompass a wide range of fields (sometimes literally) and there’s a lot to learn before you send your first flight up into the sky. A failed flight (and these […]

One of the advantages of the LoRa transceivers, when compared to the traditional RTTY modulation used by most High Altitude Balloons, is that it requires very little processing power at the receiver.  So instead of using a PC or a high end tablet or phone to decode the transmissions, all […]

Here (at last – sorry for the delays) is our new version of our Pi In The Sky Board, designed for the Raspberry Pi models A+ and B+. These new Pi models required a few changes: New smaller form-factor Connector to fit the new, larger, GPIO pin header Mounting points […]

Videos from some of my commercial launches: Superman (for RS and Mattel)   Space Potato (for Heston Blumenthal, Channel 4)   Dress Stratos (for Wreck My Dress)   BBC Cracking The Code  

It’s sometimes useful to be able to send a message up to a high altitude balloon – for example to command a cut-down if the flight path is not as planned and is likely to result in a lost payload.    This can be done using a radio uplink, either […]

I’ve had a few emails lately asking where to buy parachutes etc.  I do have links on my links page, but here they are again: HAB Electronics For HAB-rated GPS receivers, radio transmitters, other components or complete trackers: HAB Supplies – GPS and radio parts to make your own tracker […]

One of the nice things about the LoRa devices is that they do all the modulation and demodulation internally.  So whereas a traditional RTTY balloon tracker needs a PC at the receiving end (or a high end mobile phone or tablet), a LoRa receiver can be made with a simple […]