Dave Akerman

I’ve had a few emails asking how to get camera images off of the PITS SD card, and have seen flights appear on the live image page with poorly configured image settings, so I’m going to cover both of these subjects in this article. Image Configuration The image-taking is quite […]

One of the nice things about high altitude ballooning in the UK and Europe is the community spirit and help that launchers get from others who will receive and upload the launcher’s balloon transmissions, and freely offer advice during the flight.  I think it’s a very good idea to return […]

A few months back, Raspberry Pi brought out a very very nice little case for the Pi Zero, including 3 different front plates one of which accepts the Sony Pi camera.  After several minutes measuring the internal dimensions, I reckoned I could just about fit the parts for a HAB […]

As I mentioned in my previous post, I was planning to enable my landing prediction code for my next flight.  This code is based on some work that Steve Randall did a few years ago, but using a slightly different technique as I was using a Pi and therefore had […]

I’ve been a high altitude balloonist for about 6 years, but a fan of Jim Steinman’s music since Bat Out Of Hell hit the world in 1977.  The latter has had something of a renaissance lately with the musical version previewing in Manchester, and soon to open at The Coliseum […]

This, my first flight of the season, will test a few new things: LoRa Calling Mode 3G Modem functions: Upload of balloon position to habitat Upload of full-size photographs to a web server Streaming of launch and landing/recovery to Youtube Landing Prediction Standalone GSM/GPS Tracker LoRa Calling Mode “Calling Mode” […]

I’ve been meaning to do this for a while, and a short gap between projects gave me some time to try. The Microbit is (yet another) educational SBC, sitting somewhere between the Codebug and a Raspberry Pi.  Its processor has plenty enough flash memory and RAM to run a basic […]

As part of a recent project, I’ve used a few different RTL SDR devices, and was surprised how drifty some of them are, one in particular.  For their intended application – decoding wideband transmissions – this isn’t an issue, but if you want to use one to decode RTTY then it […]

Many HAB flights now use SSDV to transmit images “live” from the balloon down to the ground, using a camera connected to the flight computer, providing an immediacy that is missing when just flying standalone cameras.  Early SSDV flights used serial cameras connected to a microcontroller, but image quality (and, […]

I generally use the Raspberry Pi to receive LoRa transmissions from balloons, and to upload the packets to the HabHub servers.  However it sometimes might be more convenient to use a PC or Mac, or a phone or tablet, for internet connectivity, in which case we need some way of […]