Dave Akerman

I’ve released a new version of HAB Basem which is intended for easy management of one or more receivers from a Windows PC. The changes are: Support for Sondehub import via UDP Support for local Sonde data from a rdzTTGOSonde receiver via UDP Map shows the predicted path and landing […]

This was a school flight, where they built the payload and did the launch, I supplied a self-contained radio tracker, and a 3rd party supplied 2 rugged mobile phones to take video during the flight. It gave me a chance to test a live streaming setup that I intend to […]

Many high altitude balloons these days use LoRa, because it’s simple and inexpensive to use in the balloon and in the receiver, and because it offers extra features such as uplinks that are difficult to do otherwise. For other systems such as RTTY and APRS, the receiver can be a […]

Whilst most high altitude balloons only transmit data (telemetry and sometimes images) down to the ground, there are several applications for sending data to a balloon, for example: Requesting re-send of missing image packets Balloon repeating of other balloon telemetry Commanded cutdowns etc. My PITS software and LoRa gateway already […]

Explora is an app for Android phones to aid with chasing balloons. It shares a HAB library with my HAB PADD app and HAB Base Windows program. You can read more about the app here. I’m about to release an updated version with several changes: AFC on LoRa gateway, USB, […]

PADD (named after the Star Trek tablets) is an app for Android tablets to aid with chasing balloons. It has a few more functions than my phone app (Explora), and both apps share the same common HAB library with my HAB Base program. You can read more about the app […]

LoRa modules tend to have cheap and cheerful crystals that aren’t particularly accurate, resulting in any given 434MHz module being up to about 5kHz off the nominal frequency, any given pair of modules could disagree by to 10kHz. For the bandwidth setting most often used in HAB, the total offset […]

Earlier this year I posted an article about the TTGO Watch with the optional LoRa/GPS board, and how to program it to track LoRa high altitude balloons. Since then I’ve used it on a real flight where I found it ideal for checking that the balloon tracker was running fine […]

This is an idea that has been on my mind for a long while to do, and now with the lockdown I’ve had some time to work on it. ADS-B is used by aircraft to transmit their position to the ground. This information isn’t encrypted, and anyone can build themselves […]