sparrowfart for you even earlier for me!

I would have loved to have been there to film, but I’m hoping to catch the Poland balloon when it lands. :)

We think now it may turn south over Germany. Depends on the float altitude. But if it comes your way you’re welcome to try!

Is this an elaborate ruse to export Model As out of the UK one by one? :)

Will this be flying the new Raspberry Pi camera? Or are you mollycoddling that one and chucking up something more disposable…

Yes, it will carry a Pi camera. That’s why I was given one!

Well actually I was given two, so I have a spare for the next flight :)

You probably best warn people thinking of nicking it, that it is sending images all the time (equipped with CCTV to protect the camera board).

Cool, I live in holland so it will be great to watch its progress.

Good point, I can imagine thousands of heavy-duty Raspi enthusiasts flocking towards Southern Germany in the hope of getting hold of a slightly-used early production model…

(Well I can imagine that, anyway…)

What time do you hope to launch?

Will my daughter and I be able to see it from my house in Great Cambourne or will it already be too high by the time it crosses the A428?

Launch will be around 1030AM UK time however this is very ISH : http://ukhas.org.uk/general:glossary:ish

Nice !!!

Fat chance really. Have loads of fun you guys and hope the weather is kind to you. We’ve had 50cm of snow since we got here, but it’s nearly all gone now :)

Someone please take and post some pictures.

Good luck with this! If it lands in my garden (Milton Keynes) can I keep the equipment? :-)

is that “help” you are giving dave the same quality as we saw mooncake “helping” you dispatch merchandise ?

I am curious what chaos this will cause. Thousands of Pi enthusiast following a balloon by radio internet then car. Clogging the roads storming in some remote farmer’s field to fight over the Pi and it’s camera.

Well I’m not chasing it so I don’t care :-)

Is sparrowfart an actual word? I take it that it means very early. Exactly what time might it be?

See also Zero Dark Early (aka Zero Dark Thirty) ;)

I’ve launched balloons with up to 5kg of neck lift which, I can tell you, is enough in a blizzard to nearly pull me over. And I’m not exactly a size zero …

This time the balloon will have less than 500g of lift. I don’t think there’s any danger of any of us floating away!

How’d the launch go

uXABEN appears stuck.

Ah – it’s away now!

The chase car appears to be in Abu Dhabi – a bit of a long drive me thinks

@Daniel Radcliffe (Dan3008) the launch went like this…

http://youtu.be/Yef_EToqMXQ

(recorded from the live stream and edited as there is a lot of waiting around involved)

I know Oh Dark Thirty as we called it in the United States Marines. We just don’t use sparrows to tell time over here! 8>) And certainly not gaseous emissions from sparrows.

Really fun to see the live SSDV frames and the position tracker, great to see everything working! Looks like the PIE5 camera auto-exposure is most often trying to adjust for “dark sky / outer space”, so when a thin sliver of earth/clouds does appear in the bottom of the frame, it is blown out to full white. Seems like for this specific application it would be useful to auto-expose for a peak white level anywhere, instead of a full-frame average exposure as I assume is being done.

I think it’s starting to level off

Good, it’s supposed to :-)

I’ve seen images like this before, where there’s just too much contrast between sky and land. For next time I’ll probably set the exposure manually in the code.

Are the other balloon’s carrying any particular payload to measure anything or do anything or are they all doing this in the true adventurer spirit “Because it’s there”?

Been following all day, great work.

Lets hope it doesnt make it to North Korea

Not us. There is no chase car.

It even passed the 40km altitude mark over the Netherlands…nice :-)

Yes definitely agree.

You seem to be heading for Leichtenstein. If you want to get to Poland I think your pilot should put left hand down a bit?

Poland was the prediction earlier this week; from yesterday we expected this result.

Neato torpedo! I was just selected for a NASA educational outreach program where I’ll be helping teach students about sensor and computing payloads. We’ll be gathering in July down at NASA Dryden in Palmdale, CA, where we’ll be doing final checkout and then launching … rockets! They’ve been using microcontrollers, including Arduinos, and they’re evaluating Pi boards for integration into their next series of launches with which I will be assisting.

Please tell me the photos are being saved onboard the pi too?

They look amazing, but to see the orrigionals, without missing packets would be even better :L

It is not clear if the payload will ever be recovered… we know the GPS position now, but it may pass out of range of active ground receiver stations, and/or the batteries may die before it lands. I don’t know the current flight prediction path, but it might also drop into the Mediterranean…

I was curious what the temperature is inside the payload, but I notice the spacenear.us tracker page does not report temperature for PIE. Since the RPi CPU has a built-in temperature sensor, I would have thought that information would be easy to include?

Yes, they are all saved, together with many more images that it doesn’t have the bandwidth to send.

Yes I’ve used the CPU temperature sensor in the past, when I also measured the external temperature. I know what the profiles typically are so I didn’t bother this time.

Too bad the Pi doesn’t have a sleep mode. It would be nice if, after 24 hours it went into a cycle of shutting down for 59 minutes, then waking up at 37 minutes of each hour to put out a ‘I am at this location’ message and then sleeping again.

With a small duty cycle, the batteries could last a long time.

Ah, ok. I didn’t know if there was much variability in temperature due to thickness and “draftiness” / air-tightness of the packaging (not to mention time of day). It looks like you construct the payload structure a bit differently each time?

Very Interesting. Been watching it all evening to see where it gets to.
Do you know what happened to the 3rd one yet ?

Amazed how high they get to.

I like PIE5 image 114 :)

It seems that the PIE was lost about 04.30 uk time. The batteries might of got too cold although they hope that it might restart when it warms up. It’s a long shot though.

It seems that the PIE was lost at about 04.30 uk time. The batteries might of got too cold although they hope that it might restart when it gets warmer. It’s a long shot though.

Fingers crossed that it comes down somewhere inhabited and finds it’s way back to Dave.

Dave,
Good job on the ascent and leveling off, seemed to have worked out great. Lovely altitude profile.

121 is my favorite (Yes, I am THAT old)

141 FTW :)

How is the descent triggered, automatically, balloon bursting (at a certain altitude) or remote control ?

Well done, excellent to monitor :)

Gordon77

The AVA has landed.

High on a hill sat a lonley payload
Lay ee odl lay ee odl lay hee hoo

Not too far from a forest road, but how deep in the forest? Might need a long pole to get it down.

Campi

. . . or a long austrian?

It has now been spotted from the ground

No Its just dragging along the ground. Google Earth shows elevation of 1,57X in that area.

What were the last known positions of the two which featured in the live launch? The live tracker now seems to have ended.

How was the video feed from the launch field conveyed from there onto the internet? Was amateur (as in radio ham) fast-scan TV involved, or was it a 3G / 4G link?

Still tracking as far as can see

Gordon77

Thanks. Interesting the tracker showed it was a parachute for a while then back to a balloon.

If it is dragging along the ground, then it will be in the cleared area at the top of that hill/mountain on the boundary between Styria and Lower Austria. It is a favourite ski and king zone. Most likely still be covered with snow.

Sorry, meant to say ski and HIKING area!!!

The apparent ground movement is just GPS noise.

A local(ish) balloonist has gone out to recover AVA. It’s quite hilly there so it’ll take a while, but hopefully it’ll be recovered soon.

Any news on the other 2?

AVA has been recovered!

Here’s a photo from immediately afterwards … http://i.imgur.com/uMG0nov.png

Dave :-)

PIE5 image 86… RaspberryPi Sunset.

Luv Pi In The Sky :)

Great work Dave. I’ve been totally hooked on this for the last day and a half. I’m going to get a Radio Receiver and Antenna and put it on my roof. The roof of my house is only 12m above sea level as I live in the netherlands but there’s no buildings in my way.

PIE is lost in action after the batteries gave up. I was hoping for 24 hours but the cold reduces efficiency and voltage so it was a bit less. It was last seen heading west from Switzerland into France, and most likely burst and landed there.

AVA landed on a hill in Austria and was recovered today.

uXABEN had a GPS fault and was lost.

The live video stream from the launch field was a webcam and PC with a 3G connection. I ran the same system in the payload itself during my previous flight, using a Pi and webcam, and got video till 300m up at launch and also after it landed, which was awesome.

The hills are alive with the smell of Raspberries :)

Two photos for you, both ffrom the AVA recovery:

AVA as it landed – http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/203/img6590f.jpg

The rescue team – http://img22.imageshack.us/img22/6136/img6616p.jpg

One of the most amazing things about this hobby is the amount of help from other balloonists. Normally this is just helping with the tracking or perhaps calling you on the phone with directions when you’re trying to find a payload. This time it was a bit different – these guys drove into Austria from Slovakia and then hiked up a steep snowy hill to recover the payload. Incredible!

Dave

PIE5 image 86:

“My God… It’s full of stars!”

My blog post on the day’s shenanigans – http://www.daveakerman.com/?p=1063

Dave