Project Leda Weather Balloon Flight [May 24th, 2011]

The team released the payload attached to a weather balloon for a test flight. The payload consisted of two GoPro HD cameras, a G-wiz flight chip, and some circuitry.

Maximum altitude is unknown due to G-wiz failure (misconfiguration). The payload landed safely approximately 100 miles east of its launch location.

If you're wondering why we do not have footage of impact (upon payload return), that is because (1) unfortunately the GoPro camera case started to fog up on the inside (the camera on the bottom of the payload was housed in the case -- the side camera was not), (2) and the batteries in both cameras died before touchdown. A battery extension system has been developed already for our next launch.

For the official project site, see:
http://projectleda.org/

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Project
• Leda
• GoPro
• HD
• weather
• balloon
• launch
• high
• altitude
• near-space
• Palomar
• College

[keepingthebeat1989]

cool vid. why does everyone with these balloons also have a big tarp on the ground at the launching point?

[projectleda]

@keepingthebeat1989 The tarp is to keep the weather balloon from touching the ground. The balloon is very thin, and we don't want it to get a small puncture from anything on the ground

[WeArePurpose]

@pghms3guy Thanks! Good luck with your designs. I'm obviously not the uploader, but I am on the team.

One of our two cameras was sealed. Ironically, the sealed camera was the one that started to fog up (case damaged before flight). Also, some team members initially designed an insulated box to protect the cameras, but because of some design issues, we had to go with a simple container that was not well-insulated. Overall, it worked well, though. Check out the second flight vid. for more footage!

[pghms3guy]

This is awesome. I'm currrently making a camera case. I'd like to do this before summer is over. Are your cameras sealed? Any kind of heating elements in the case to keep the camera from freezing up?