Payloads
When academic scientific balloons are launched, they are carrying payloads. These payloads can serve a large range of uses, and are how our data is collected. Let's dig into some of the payloads used during eclipse ballooning projects.
Engineering Data
There is publically available data on the result of these engineering efforts!
NEBP GitHub
Here updated code for running various systems (such as the ground station) will be shared for you to download. We will provide instructions on how to manually update your software when the server move is complete.
Charging Batteries
There is an LED on the battery charger that indicates that the charging cycle is finished. The LED will be on when charging and off when complete. A description is provided on the Sparkfun website along with schematics if you are interested.
A datasheet for the chip they are using that provides even more detail as to how it works:
Sometimes the charger will not go into the charging mode when the battery is first plugged in for some reason. You may have to cycle the battery in and out of the connector to get the charging mode to start. A fully charged battery will measure 4.2 volts as measured with a volt meter with the battery disconnected from anything.
Pi SD Cards
There are several ways of doing it but we provide instructions how to transfer video and photos from the Pis to the ground station laptop using a program called WinSCP in both the RFD and Ubiquity documentation. WinSCP should be installed on all the laptops. Double check the instructions to see which IP addresses are being used, but when you are connected to the pi over Ubiquity you open Winscp and there is a box to enter the IP address of the pi, the user name: pi, and the password: raspberry. It then opens a window divided in half with one half showing the files on the laptop and the other half showing the files on the pi. Then you just drag and drop the files/folders you want to copy from one to the other. In VLC there is a way to record the video the laptop while it is streaming but this may change if we are not using VLC anymore. With the RFD you connect to the pi over the ad-hoc and follow the same steps but the IP address of the pi will be different depending if you are on the video payload or the RFD payload. This method lets you transfer files in the field without additional hardware or being connected to a network. If you are in a lab and have the pi connected to a monitor and keyboard you can put a usb flash drive in the pi and copy the video or photos to the flash drive. If you are connected to a network you can use a program on the pi called scp to copy the files to anywhere on the same network but this would require knowing how to change the network settings on the pi to connect to the network you are trying to use so copying to the ground station or to a flash drive is the easiest. I can make a video on this too.
If anyone is curious why you can’t just put the card in a computer and copy the files: The SD card on the pi is essentially the Pi’s hard drive, it is set up and partitioned just like any hard drive in a Linux desktop computer. If you were to put the SD card in a Windows PC it would be like taking a hard drive out of a Linux computer and trying to run it in a Windows computer. You could take the SD card and put it in a Linux computer and copy files but you have to know how the Linux OS tree is structured in order to find anything, it would not just be a list of files with human readable names until you got deep enough into the file structure. With digital cameras and other things that use SD cards they are using the SD card as additional storage similar to plugging a flash drive into a computer. The OS and other software that runs the camera, phone, etc is stored in somewhere else (EEPROM memory on another chip), where as the Pi the only storage is the SD card which is where the OS is stored, so it is structured like a computer’s hard drive and not like a flash drive.
Maestro Settings
Start by plugging in the power and the USB connector to your laptop. Then open the Maestro Control Center program.
First you need to check that their device is connected. Using any of the screen shot files in the box labeled Connected to: you should find your device. From there go to the Serial Settings page. For reference look at the file named Maestro_Serial. The correct setting should be USP Dual Port, but you should be able to control the servos with either the Dual Port or UART Fixed Baud Rate (9600) setting. If you change the box that is checked you will need to use Apply Settings to make the change.
Using the Maestro_ChannelSetting file as a reference, you should then go the Channel Settings window. Using the On startup or error menu they should choose “Go to” rather than “off“. This will have the servos go to “zero” when they plug in their USB cable to the laptop the next time. Same as before use Apply Setting to make the change.
Using the Maestro Status screen shot as a reference you should see the two servo ports 0 and 1 checked. You can then use the slider bars to verify that the servos move.
This test should verify that their new Maestro board is functioning. The next test will be to move on to the Ground Station GUI.
2017 Radiosonde Resources
Image Credit: Jennifer Fowler, Toltén, Chile 2020, Lufft data recording for radiosonde initialization
Radiosonde Launch Video
Radiosonde Initialization Video
2017 Radiosonde Project
This is an opportunity to learn about our atmosphere’s response to a rare event. The US has not had a total solar eclipse cross the entire US, from Oregon to South Carolina, since 1918. The goal is to train participants in conducting surface upper air observations using radiosondes (the devices used by the NWS daily) at 4-5 sites across the country from August 19 – 22, 2017. The eclipse itself happens on August 21, 2017. These balloon-borne devices provide basic atmospheric measurements including temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, wind direction, and pressure. The eclipse gives us the opportunity to conduct the largest geographic campaign of balloon flights ever undertaken. The focus on increased spatial and temporal resolution of data for scientific and forecasting purposes is extraordinary. With cross agency collaborations we have the potential for this to be the largest geographic radiosonde campaign ever undertaken. For additional details, check out the SLU2016 Eclipse Meeting PowerPoint Presentation.
- Public engagement. Total eclipses are rare and very impactful events. For those who have witnessed them, it is a memory they keep forever. The continental US hasn’t had a total eclipse since 1979 (northwest only). The NASA Space Grant network is in a unique position to engage the public in an awe-inspiring and educational way at a surprisingly small cost.
- STEM pipeline development. Conducting radiosonde flights presents an amazing hands-on learning opportunity for students. Participation in these launches encourages students to follow STEM paths through college. The engaging STEM content resulting from this project is not limited to the time-frame immediately following the launch, but introduces a permanent dataset that can be analyzed by students, extending the impact of the flights to future classrooms as well.
- Partnerships. We will develop several potentially long lasting partnerships with other federal agencies and with industry; an effort we hope will include a broad range of leveraged assets. It also gives students the unique opportunity to directly interact with experts in the field. We will incorporate a citizen science component for measurements such as in the assistance in collecting data for shadow band studies, the interference pattern of dark and light rings that appear on the ground immediately before and after an eclipse.
To share the solar eclipse experience with K-12 learners and their families across the country, Montana Space Grant Consortium encourages participation in the following citizen science activities to supplement our research efforts;
- How does life respond to the dramatic event of a total solar eclipse? https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/life-responds-total-solar-eclipse-2017
- NASA S’COOL: Student Cloud Observations On-Line; https://scool.larc.nasa.gov/
Surface upper air observations using radiosondes will be conducted at 6-7 sites across the country from August 19 – 22, 2017.Eclipse totality starts on the Oregon coast at about 1:20 PM Eastern on August 21, 2017 and ends about 2:50 PM Eastern on the South Carolina coast.
Teams will be coordinated with both the large balloon launch sites and surface mesonets (mesoscale network environmental monitoring stations).
While radiosonde launches are done twice daily by the National Weather Service, carrying out a coordinated network of such flights among academic institutions from across the country presents a few challenges. These challenges are broad – technical, political, administrative – but provide interesting training opportunities for the student participants and make the project exciting and very worthwhile for the participating teams. Challenges include: precise timing of the launches for temporal resolution targets, collaborating with groups of mentors and students at locations spread across the country, making the necessary arrangements with NASA so that the data can be linked to the NASA eclipse (or main) web page, developing the infrastructure for data analysis by the undergraduate students, and developing the curriculum for the 7-12th grade students to be utilized after the event.
Possible interesting total eclipse experiments include but are not limited to: measuring temperature fluctuations, solar irradiance fluctuations, and gravity wave development. This data lends itself to real world applications for practicing graphing techniques, data analysis, and data interpretation that range from basic to complex problems.