The gang at 757 Labs decided to put together an entry for the first-ever Hackerspaces in Space competition. The team did a great job of getting the payload designed and built and our launch and subsequent recovery couldn’t1 have gone better.
After debating a couple of different designs including the use of cell phones we settled on using an actual GPS chip and transmitting APRS data back to our recovery team (and more importantly to APRS repeaters in the area as we found out). Also included was a buzzer for alerting the recovery team which was a handy feature. The build team consisted of Harold, Erik, and Ken with programming help from Travis. All of whom did a great job.
Launch day was Sunday August 29th and we all met at the Lab to assemble. The recovery team consisted of Ethan, Erik, Ken, Mike, and myself. Later we’d be joined by Michael W. who was letting us use his field to launch. Launch prep went smoothly with lots of double/triple/quadruple checking of “is the camera on?”.
We let go at 10:58 AM EST and anxiously awaited the first transmission form the balloon aloft. It was an agonizing 60 seconds. We all sat around watching our baby float off into the clouds until it was nearly out of sight and then began the frantic packing of gear into cars to start the chase. Sadly Mike parted ways with the rest of the group here as he had to get back to the Lab to prepare for the 757 CCC meetup that afternoon. Michael W. decided to join us and brought along baby Ridley who’d been enjoying (except for the loud noises of the helium tank as we filled the balloon) the launch prep from the porch.
Tracking the balloon felt a bit like being a storm chaser. We were receiving live data from the balloon for the first 16,000 ft. and tracking it via aprs.fi after that calling between vehicles with status updates on our walkies. For a while we managed to get ahead of the balloon and stopped for lunch but after higher altitude winds got ahold of it we were racing to keep up.
After peaking at over 103,000 ft. we confirmed the balloon burst and was on the way down after a few consecutive readings of decreasing altitude and pulled over to try to get a fix on its eventual resting place. Sadly we realized we were nearly 30 minutes away from where it was headed. The last transmission we received was at 3,000 ft. and (when reception permitted) we were getting quite a few text messages and twitter inquires as the the balloons status from those following along at home. The situation didn’t look too good as the area under the last reported location was heavily wooded. The balloon’s camera also documented this for us quite well…
The car’s GPS, having been given the last known coordinates of the balloon, told us to “navigate off road” into a soybean field and the woods behind it but we decided against it and pushed on looking for at least a decent place to pull off the road. Luckily there was a fire lane just down the road that served quite nicely.
While we were there Ethan pulled out an old scanner we’d brought along and tuned into the station on which the balloon was broadcasting. After a few second we heard a screech of data that made us all quite excited. The balloon was a live and we could hear it! We adjusted the input to the laptop and managed to get coordinates off the last message. With updated coordinates we set off on foot down the fire road2. The handheld GPS was telling us that it was basically directly down the road; sadly this was too good to be true. The balloon appeared to be 500-700 ft. off the road into the woods and, somewhat discouragingly, 96 ft. above sea level. Off we went exploring.
The first trek didn’t yield anything other than a debate over if we’d head the buzzer or not. We retreated to the fire road to try to make a call to Harold in an attempt to get confirmation on what we were hearing. While there wegot another GPS fix on the location with the handheld which wasn’t getting great reception in the woods. The group had mixed feelings about what we were hearing but decided with some encouragement from Ken to make another attempt. We headed back into the woods and kept looking in treetops hoping to catch a glimpse of the bright pink parachute. Strangely i did find a pink party balloon lying in the woods along the way.
I happened to not be looking at treetops when i caught a glimpse of pink in the trees. All i could see was a swatch of pink and nothing else but i couldn’t really think of anything else that it could be. I called to Erik and Ken to get eyes on it as well so we didn’t lose it when trying to get through the underbrush and then we headed on. What awaited us was both exciting and a bit daunting — the balloon was hanging about 20-30 ft. up in a tree.
Ken and Erik grabbed some large branches and began trying to catch the parachute lines with them so we could pull it down. We managed with not too much effort and soon had payload, parachute, and balloon remnants in our hands. We rushed back through the woods and began our trip back to the car to try and get the pictures off of the card. At this point i realized that the payload was still taking pictures! The buzzer appeared to have died but everything else was still working. Again, amazing job by the build team!
Once in the car Ethan pried open the payload container and pulled the SD card from a quite hot digital camera. We let it cool for a bit and then feasted on the fruits of our labor. Some truly amazing shots from our first attempt at high-altitude ballooning.
The project was a great success and a lot of fun. Thanks to Workshop 88 for coming up with the idea that motivated us to participate and best of luck to all of our fellow hackerspaces competing.
For more information on the project be sure to check out 757labs.org for blog posts as well as the 757 Labs Flickr Pool for some great photos.
[1] I guess we probably could have done without it landing in a forest in North Carolina but it only added about 30-45 minutes to the recovery time.
[2] Which incidentally was also an access road for a local hunting club…
