Project Profile: Reach For Near Space
On June 29th., 2019, four members of Triple Cities Makerspace launched, tracked, and recovered a high-altitude balloon. Left to Right: Gary Dewey (KD2PYB), Adam Biener, Erik Leonard, John Flinn (N2NOL) The balloon used was a 600-gram weather balloon filled with around 100 cubic feet of helium. Inflating the balloon with helium. The payload consisted of: an HD video camera, an APRS radio transmitter to transmit GPS and altitude data, and a Slow Scan TV transmitter. The balloon’s payload The APRS (Automatic Packet Reporting System) transmitter module was supposed to send live GPS coordinates and altitude information on the frequency of 144.390 MHz to any listening I-gates (radio internet gateways) for the duration of the flight. The Slow Scan TV system consisted of a Raspberry Pi Zero with a Pi camera and a digital to analog converter sound card. The Pi was set up with a Linux daemon script to repeatedly snap a photo, convert it to a Martin-1 Slow Scan TV audio file, then play that file out through a radio transmitter. This would allow us to send live phot