{"id":719,"date":"2018-06-08T14:41:47","date_gmt":"2018-06-08T13:41:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/engdes-student-insights\/?p=719"},"modified":"2018-06-08T14:43:27","modified_gmt":"2018-06-08T13:43:27","slug":"building-and-testing-part-1-launching-a-high-altitude-balloon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/engdes-student-insights\/2018\/06\/08\/building-and-testing-part-1-launching-a-high-altitude-balloon\/","title":{"rendered":"Building and Testing (part 1) - launching a High Altitude Balloon"},"content":{"rendered":"

Author: Jacob Smith -<\/h3>\n
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Welcome back to my balloon blog. You\u2019ll be glad to hear I have been very busy with this project over the last couple of months - testing the cameras, finalising and testing the tracking device, and modifying a polystyrene box to house all the components\u2026a lot of things to talk about! I\u2019ll split this up into two posts \u2013 up first is the tracker and cameras.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no going back now<\/em><\/strong><\/h2>\n

Having designed and successfully tested the electronic circuit for the tracking system<\/a>, it was time to transfer the components to a stripboard and solder them in position. On a stripboard, parallel copper tracks run along the width on the underside of the board. Current will flow along a track and may be stopped at certain points by cutting the copper track, allowing flexibility in the creation of circuits. The point of this is to create a more robust circuit by soldering wires giving them less chance of coming loose during flight, which could result in the tracker not working. Also, by including a row of \u2018header pins\u2019 along the two lengths of the board I would be able to simply plug the circuit into the Arduino.<\/p>\n

It took a few weeks to get the components all positioned in a way that I thought would work, after which time I took the brave step to start soldering knowing that it would be difficult to go back if there were big errors in my judgement. Having never used a stripboard before this was highly likely! Unsurprisingly I had a few issues when it came to providing power to my circuit\u2026a short circuit, the smell of burning...but thankfully nothing that I couldn\u2019t quickly fix without having to start again. Below is the finished circuit.<\/p>\n

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Working on the tracker, and the finished product!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Camera set-up and testing <\/em><\/strong><\/h2>\n

In my last post<\/a> I introduced the cameras that I would be using, a Lightdow action camera for taking video, and a Canon PowerShot for stills. Finding a power bank to power the action camera was a challenge in balancing battery capacity with mass, as throughout the design of a balloon payload it is important to minimise mass wherever possible. The one that I settled on performed extremely well as you will see in the video below, as did the Energizer Ultimate Lithium batteries used to power the camera and tracker.<\/p>\n

I have successfully added the Canon Hack Development Kit to the SD card in the Canon camera, which allows the camera to run various scripts to add more functionality. I will run the basic \u2018take a picture every 5 seconds\u2019 script. The Canon and video camera will both use the same size and class SD card - 32GB size as I want to store a lot of data, and Type 10 class which is fastest data writing speed for an SD card.<\/p>\n

Testing is a vital part of any engineering - it allows you to see if you have actually made what you think you've made, and to discover any unforeseen issues. I operated the cameras and tracker for longer than I hope the flight will be, giving me confidence that they will perform adequately on the real flight. Watch the video below to see all the testing in action\u2026<\/p>\n