[CHP] Space Balloon

Team,

If you haven’t been in IRC lately or to this week’s meeting you may not have heard that we’re officially going to try to send some perfectly good electronics into (near) space.

After Chris Davis won a Flip Mino (video camera) at ITMartini, Jason was inspired to launch it into the upper atmosphere and he’s already purchased a weather balloon for that purpose.

It turns out there is actually an inter-hackerspace competition going on this summer with this same goal and so we’re going to try and get in on that. Jason, I believe has registered us (or tried to) here: http://www.workshop88.com/space/

If you’re interested in this at all I highly suggest contacting Jason and checking out the wiki page: http://wiki.hive13.org/Space_Balloon

Momentum for this has built fast so keep it going and get involved. I imagine the balloon team will likely want to meet regularly and often to get everything planned, designed and built soon.

Keep us all up to date and make us proud. Ad astera, etc.

~Dave

Where are we planning on having online discussions? Mailing list, irc, wave? I would like to be a part of this but I am traveling a lot in the next to weeks so I want to know where the general disussions for this project will be taking place.

Craig

I think the mailing list is the most appropriate place for these discussions.

Dave, thank you for starting this thread!

Anyone interested should plan on attending the next Tuesday meeting
(5/11). We'll have a kickoff discussion after the business meeting
and develop a to-do list.

Jason

Update! We have just about all of the equipment except the parachute,
and I will be ordering it this week.

I'd like to get together on 6/15 after the meeting to start assembling
the payload. We have some batteries donated by Halfelf that we're
going to be wiring up to the camera and figuring out what else we need
to finish everything up.

Next step, notifying the FAA and finding an appropriate launch site.
I expect we'll be sending this puppy into near space during the month
of July.

If anyone is interested in helping out, stick around after the meeting
on the 15th and join in.

Cheers,
Jason

All-

Unfortunately life has intervened tonight and neither myself or Chris Davis are going to be able to make it to the Hive tonight. The Balloon payload assembly meeting is hereby postponed until next week, 6/22.

Sorry for the late notice!

Jason

Well, this is a familiar refrain. I'm not going to be able to make it
to the Hive tomorrow but I'd still like to move forward with building
the payload this week. Chris, Jon - would you guys be available to
come by on Wednesday, instead?

Jason

Who is going to be able to come out tonight?

James, did you leave those batteries somewhere? Was hoping to try to
wire them up so we get more battery life out of the camera.

Dave, you'd mentioned a spare Canon that we may be able to mod with the CHDK?

Does anyone know if we need to do anything special with the phone,
other that compensate for the space / weight and run the app?

I can bring them tonight. Can you bring that computer that you were going to give me for my friend? That way we can get everything taken care of at once.

-James

Sure can, and sounds good. I will be there around 7:30.

Yes, I have several cameras that work quite well with CHDK. I
originally had a spare Canon A590, but have since decided to keep it.
Now the cameras I'm not planning on using are a pair of Canon A530's.
My plan was to sell them online. I'd be happy to part with them for
$30 each or $50 for both.

~Dave

Thanks, Dave. A topic of discussion tonight will be whether or not we
want to use them for additional time lapse shots, etc. If so, I'll
let you know.

My timeline this evening has gotten a bit stretched and it looks like
I won't be able to make it until around 8pm, unfortunately.

Jason