Raspberry Pi Forums

daveake

LoRa itself is very good for weather balloon tracking; I use it for all of my flights. LoRaWAN however has less range (it only uses some of the higher bandwidth modes), and because of legal and fair-use policies you would be limited to only sending a small number of packets during the flight. The on...

daveake

My recommendation is to use a DS18B20 1-wire temperature sensor outside the payload, with something to shade it from direct radiation from the sun (otherwise it will heat up). This device is directly supported by Raspbian (enable it in raspi-config) and requires very little code to read the temperat...

daveake

I didn't either! I expected to need to install something, but found a web post somewhere that mentioned that file does it.

daveake

If you don't mind it not being the Raspberry Pi camera, you can get USB webcams that focus themselves. Also some compact and SLR cameras can be connected via USB for remote operation.

daveake

Cheers guys. Dougie's solution is close in concept to what I've done, which is to take a photo with raspistill then check the pixel size in the file: raspistill -o test.jpg jpeg=$(file test.jpg) rm -f test.jpg if [[ $jpeg == *"2592"* ]]; then echo "Old camera" else echo "New...

daveake

You have to build the payload properly to prevent any damage to either the internals or whatever it might land on. Essentially, that means using polystyrene foam for packaging, and making sure that everything inside is secure so it won't move about at all. Also, of course, a parachute is used to ens...

daveake

No. Using that board, a powerbank, GPS antenna, foam/tape/etc you'd struggle to be below £50. Then you need a receiving station (similar board sans GPS), aerial (which you could make), aerial cable and another Pi plus a display of some sort. So that's another £50. Then a balloon and gas, approx £100...

daveake

LoRa range depends on power, bandwidth and other settings. For UK airborne use on the 434MHz bands, we're limited to 10mW and the LoRa 20.8kHz bandwidth setting. Range with those settings from a balloon at high altitude is hundreds of miles, comfortably. I think the record with RTTY at 10mW is about...

daveake

You could try it. I haven't. I'm not a fan of the lens distortion in your average action cam, though that can be fixed afterwards in software. Other cameras, camcorders etc usually have lenses with very low distortion. Weight is always an issue. More weight = more gas and a lower altitude, or you ne...

daveake

I agree with the long cable, so camera is inside and everything else outside.

A freezer won't get anywhere near as cold as the cameras on my Pi high-altitude balloon flights have gotten, and those have been fine.

Dave

daveake

GoPros are indeed an expensive risk. Also, they're not particularly reliable - I and others have had firmware issues that stop them from even starting up, and they've been known to switch off during flight for no good reason. Also, the later models with 4K resolution will overheat in a HAB and there...

daveake

APRS stations might exist globally, but not every country allows the use of amateur radio from an airborne device, so in those countries (e.g. UK) it's not legal to use APRS frequencies from a balloon. Personally, even if I was in a country where airborne APRS is viable, I'd prefer to fly ISM (e.g. ...

daveake

First, see the sticky re where to go for PITS support. Using the sense HAT for radio telemetry requires 3 steps, not just the payload doc: - Write some code to read the sense HAT sensors and produce a CSV file from the results (see sample Python script) - Configure PITS to read that file and add the...

daveake

None at all. And even if I did, with the amount of information you've provided so far, I wouldn't be able to advise you anyway.

daveake

Still unsure what you're trying to achieve. Remember that a GPS position could be out by several metres.

daveake

beatsal wrote:Thanks Dave for reply.
Just wondering if I can hook it up with a (Android?) to get GPS info.

Android devices generally have their own GPS, so not sure what your aim is here, but yes it could be done using (e.g.) a bluetooth link between Pi and Android.

daveake

i486 wrote:http://www.banggood.com/VK-172-GMOUSE-U ... 73820.html

This works like serial port but not sure it will be recognized by RPi.

Yes, those work fine, appearing as a tty serial port on the Pi (ttyACM0 or ttyUSB0 - I forget which).

Dave

daveake

Never heard of that model, and neither has Google - the only link it came back with was your post!

There are several Pi HAT GPS boards, or you can use a USB GPS dongle. To a basic level (sending common NMEA strings with time and position) they're all the same.

Dave

daveake

Before I try it, if I want to use the full serial port device on the Pi Zero W, should I use the same overlay as on the Pi V3, i.e.:

Code: Select all

dtoverlay=pi3-disable-bt

or is there or will there be an overlay specific to the Zero W ?

Dave

daveake

Do you have the red cursor lines aligned with the 2 signal bars?

Sorting decoding via a forum is too slow; please join #highaltitude and ask there.

daveake

They are delicate, even more so than the larger ones on other Pis. I've broken 2 or 3 of the clips, but the solution (as with most other issues in my hobby, if not life) is duct tape.

daveake

My thought is: buy an Amazon Fire stick and put Kodi on it.

daveake

I'm not a fan of Gopro lens distortion, but mainly I'm not a fan of their reliability. The Hero 4 Black can overheat; the Hero 3 (in particular) can hang up just because it wants to. For a similar view and quality, but much less money, and much more reliability, the "Gitup Git2" is a good ...

daveake

The cheap (£20 or less) dongles are pretty deaf, and can be overloaded easily if you have strong signals locally. Both of these issues can be fixed by using a filtered pre-amplifier between the aerial and the dongle - see https://store.uputronics.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=53...

daveake

Try http://www.balloonhelium.co.uk and http://www.click4balloons.co.uk/ Either will be much cheaper than going direct to BOC or Air Products. Both show the actual volumes of their cylinders, so no need for the old conversation: "Hello, I'd like to rent a helium cylinder please" "Great...

Search found 180 matches

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Pi Zero W Serial Port

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