Brmball

Brmball
founder:	joe
depends on:	weather_control
interested:	Plnt niekt0 pasky timthelion
software license:	3 clause BSD or GPLv2+
hardware license:	CC-BY-SA

A stratospheric balloon project.

The ultimate goal of this project is to build semi-autonomous stratospheric balloon that can do some basic scientific measurements, take pictures and communicate with ground station. The main difference from other similar projects is that we want to figure out a way for the balloon to _stay in stratosphere long-term_, not just come up and right back down.

To successfully complete this project, various sub-goals have to be met:

• designing the balloon in reasonably scalable way and assembling one
• defining the payload equipment (board, comms, metering interfaces)
• designing and manufacturing the payload enclosure (heat and pressure issues)
• solving a reasonable power supply (photovoltaic cells, rechargeable batteries and clever power management)
• do some research, propose and test a communication protocol (remember we cannot be sure where it will be blown to)

And then the final goal will be:

• put everything together, launch it and spend next decade analysing our planet from the altitude of 20km
• Break on through to the other side (of Kármán line)

The project is currently in the planning stage. Everything has to be done from scratch.

• Nice and simple transmitter: http://hackaday.com/2010/07/27/200-mile-rf-transmitter-and-high-altitude-balloon/
• Space at 1337arts - project Ikarus: http://space.1337arts.com/ (Oct, 2009)
• Project Meteotek08 - http://teslabs.com/meteotek08/ and pics - http://www.flickr.com/photos/meteotek08 (Feb, 2009)
• MIMOSA Satellite - http://www.asu.cas.cz/~macek/mimosa_2_cz1250.html [CZ] (1998) - communication systems of real satellite
• How to launch a weather balloon - http://www.cbradio.cz/forum/read.php?28,51523,51728,quote=1 [CZ] - information about real launches performed by chmu.cz (hydro-meteorologic institute)
• Relevant czech legislation - http://www.sagit.cz/pages/sbirkatxt.asp?zdroj=sb06439&cd=76&typ=r [CZ]
• skBalloon - http://kozmonautika.sk/obsah/projekt-skballoon [SK]
• http://czanso.com/ [CZ]
• http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2010/12/android-in-spaaaace.html
• zpráva o úspěchu jiného českého týmu http://blog.czanso.com/2011/09/dokazali-jsme-to-stoprocentni-uspech-letu-balonu-czanso/