Tiny Balloon Computer
From Meat and Networking Wiki
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The Tiny Balloon Computer is a small flight tracking computer designed for the White Star Balloon program in further experiments with pressurized balloons (Superpressure balloons). This flight computer is capable of transmitting position, temperature, and barometric pressure in either CW or RTTY modes, at 25mW, for up to 20 hours on a single AA battery.
Hardware
- Microcontroller: AtMega328P
Chosen for simplicity, familiarity, and Arduino compatibility, should these ever become generally available. - Transmitter: ADF7012
Chosen because it's cheap, and can transmit FSK data with absurdly small frequency shifts (Multiples of 125Hz). - Pressure Sensor: BMP085
Cheapest absolute pressure sensor money can buy. Only good to 300 Millibar, but some quick experiments will show us how accurate that is. - Power Regulator: MCP1640
Start-up voltage, .65v, operates down to .36v, 80% efficiency through the main part of the curve, 3.3v out @ 100mA from a single AA cell. That's more to like? - GPS: Whatever you like
Header is designed to provide a generic interface to any serially accessible GPS. This one is appealing for a lot of reasons.
Software
Not written yet!
Download
The balloon computer is open hardware!
- Git Repository: Here for now
I need to find a better repository host.
I'm not sure what license to use yet, so right now, this is released under the "Don't be a Dick" license.
