UKHAS Wiki

The plan is to develop a system which is able to control the direction that the sideways facing camera takes its picture. There are a variety of ways of doing this including actually controlling the spin of the payload (which is technically very challenging). Instead using a digital compass to calculate spin it should be possible to set the camera to trigger at an appropriate moment (taking into account the spin rate) so that the picture takes when the camera is facing the chosen direction.

• Gumstix + GPSstix
• Nokia 5110 (BTUART)
• Premier DS-3081S (3.0 MP)
• 434 Mhz 10mW radio (toggled by gpio with morse code of location and altitude)
• i2c Digital Compass
• 4 x AAA lithium battery pack
• 1 x 9V battery

Pretty much nearly there, all the hardware is in place so its now a matter of sorting out the software:

• Radio - done, transmits morse code at 11wpm with a format of PEGVlat/long/alt on 434.075mhz
• Phone - done, two texts to ground control then one text to zeusbot and repeats.
• Camera - done
• Compass - done
• Cutdown -

• First attempt - Saturday 28th April at 10.00am from Churchill
• Weather - good, low windspeeds at all levels.
• Flight Plan - climb as high as possible, only cutdown if strays out of 100km radius.
• Setup = Balloon – cutdown – parachute – Pegasus V – mc-2

• Pegasus V will be broadcasting on its radio on a frequency of 434.075mhz with a power of 10mW its position and altitude in the format of “PEGVlat/long/alt”. If anyone picks it up it would be great if you could log the data (send it to jacoxon@googlemail.com) and if you are feeling proactive there are a couple of ways you can get involved in the tracking. Though only the beginning of a distributed system the IRC bot on our channel #highaltitude is capable of relay positions etc - here is a little guide:
  • On IRC doing !position will relay the last known position of the payload
  • All the positions received by zeusbot are logged here.
  • Positions can be sent to zeusbot by emailing zeusmail@nerdshack.com, leave the subject empty and put in the main text: “pegV /lat/long/alt/name”
  • Using an sms to email system you can text a position to 07766 40 41 42 using the format: “zeusmail@nerdshack.com pegV /lat/long/alt/name” (The payload will also send messages to this number every 3rd attempt to text it to ground control).
  • Finally you can play the position onto a map by entering lat,long in the form here (need link)

• Finish payload - jcoxon
• Helium - rocketboy now has 4 cu m (also if ed and henry can get hold of the engineering department helium that would be great)
• Balloon - got
• Parachute - rocketboy - still have the 36“ from Peg IV - yep will bring
• Cutdown - rocketboy - yep will bring
• Get Permission for Churchill - Ed
• CAA contact - Henry?
• Charge batteries - jcoxon