Project Horus High altitude balloon project

19Jan/124

Project Horus balloon launch at LCA 2012

On Tuesday the 17th ofВ January, we gave our presentation on high altitude ballooning at the 2012 Linux.conf.au, following up with the launch a micropayload. A big thanks to everyone who turned out for the talk and came along to the launch!

Joel getting ready to launch at LCA2012

We certainly weren't short on volunteers with cameras at the launch - many thanks to those of you who got us coverage via the likes of Gizmodo.

Unfortunately the balloon did end up getting quite a bit higher (and hence further away!) than we had expected - it eventually landed out in Port Phillip bay. For the curious folk, there is a KML of the flight path online here.

Our chase car tracking

Mark managed to do an excellent job of decoding the payload right down to the ground - despite being over 50km away, we managed to receive data right down to 83m above sea level.

The video highlights reel we showcased at the conference is nowВ publiclyВ available - a big thanks to our resident video guru Grant.

For those who saw the talk, don't forget that voting is still open for the best talks of LCA 2012. The most highly rated talks will be repeated on Friday the 20th - given the opportunity we'll be launching and tracking another micropayload. ;-)

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Comments (4) Trackbacks (1)
  1. Nice thanks very much

  2. Hey i just wanted to ask you which Arduino board did you guys use? Was it the Arduino Uno?

  3. Hi,
    We use custom PCBs, not any standard Arduino boards. They still have AVRs and are programmed using the Arduino IDE though.

    - Darkside

  4. Brilliant video, great project. Go team!

    Cheers,

    mb
    VK6QI/1


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