It seems like every where I look, a quatrefoil (four-leaved) design is a source of inspiration.  Whether it is used on walls or accent pieces, it really lends itself to a clean and modern aesthetic.  Although I like to think of my style as eclectic traditional, I am finding more and more that it is hard to pin down my style.  One thing I do know is I know what I like, and I like quatrefoil.  I am completely inspired by the pantry at The House of Smith’s.  I don’t know if it’s the gray paint that looks like it’d fit our color scheme, or the pantry placement that is eerily similar to our own, but it is totally my style.  You’ll even notice that she uses a quatrefoil design as part of her blog layout!

I am also enamored with her creative use of vinyl lettering.  Now, it’s no secret that I have a new l0ve for all things vinyl ever since my diy vinyl wall tree.  Turn’s out she actually sells custom vinyl lettering.  This means she must have a vinyl cutter.  Drool!  I’m a sucker for random industrial equipment.  Speaking of which, does anyone need to borrow a book binder?

One of the most genius application of a quatrefoil design was at Twin Dragonfly Designs.  Using a clear glossy finish only, it was applied using a stencil.  Can you say subtle chic?

Keep in mind, a quatrefoil desing can be put anywhere.  At Casa de Lewis, tiles were put to good use as beautiful coasters.

Where would you put a quatrefoil design?  I am debating between stenciling the craft room with a clear gloss like Twin Dragonfly Designs or in using a keep it simple approach like Casa de Lewis and using her method to add a quatrefoil design to a vase or similar piece of room eye candy.  Whatchya’ think?

Photo by Charles Jeffrey Danoff

Adam and I were recently discussing our lack of posts on our blog.  Between working full-time as a teacher and part time as a master’s degree student, I try not to beat my self up too much over lack of posts.  Adam has a similar time commitment, just in reverse (full time PhD student, part time teacher).  However, even with these time consuming responsibilities, we still feel guilty.  Blog posts from the pros like this and this and this (and more) say blog often.  In fact they all advise blogging a minimum of once a week.  We average a post a month.  If we’re lucky.  Can you say blogging fail?  Now with summer approaching, time is being put into both of our laps.  Time helps.  Of course, thinking that since you have “time” you are going to post more is a fallacy. I’ve been there.  And so has Adam.  So what is going to push us over the edge to start posting more?  What do you think would help?

I am obviously not an expert, but I analyzed the areas of life where I am most productive and I have come to this conclusion.  It is all about feeling obligated.  Responsible.  Accountable.  (I’m trying to find the perfect word to describe the feeling I think I should have, but I’m at a loss.)  Currently, I do not  feel compelled to post to my blog regularly.  It is a side thing, a hobby.  Obligation, responsibility, and accountability seem incongruous with hobby.  But passion can drive a hobby and lead you to accomplish great things.  It is happened to me before (even if right now it feels fizzled).  How do I begin to feel intrinsic motivation to blog?  I decided I need to figure out why I wanted to blog in the first place.

My reasons to blog (a.k.a “Why I wanted to blog in the first place…”)

1. Build Awareness for my Business, SheekGeek (which is also a side hobby!)
2. Share DIY Projects I’ve Completed (like this one – which is my current favorite post thus far)
3. Teach Others (Adam and I are both teachers after all!)
4. Become a Better Writer
5. Make Money (I didn’t want to put this, but I am just being honest with myself.)
6. Document My Life

Looking at this list, I’m trying to find my spark of motivation.  Surprisingly, Number 3 is really what is getting me going right now.  Good writing evolves.  The best writers write all the time. Every day.  I don’t write every day! I can’t reach my goals if I am not working towards them.  Adam and I both have writing a book on our bucket list (hehe, who doesn’t have writing a book on their bucket list these days!).  I get a slight adrenaline high when I write.  Ideas start flowing and it is a good feeling.  That means there is positive reinforcement for writing.  I definitely need to get into the habit of writing/posting.  I think goals need to be said aloud (or in this case typed).  I want to become a better writer. Ah, who am I kidding.  I said it aloud too.  I WANT TO BECOME A BETTER WRITER! Man, that feeling of accountability is growing.

I think if lesson number one of blogging 101 is “blog often” then potential bloggers need to analyze why they would want to blog often.  Especially if they need a kick in the backside like me!

The cord set comes with an open eye hook, but it didn’t work in our situation because there was no stud in the ceiling where we wanted to hang the light. We ended up buying a hanging plant hook kit. We had to modify the hook slightly because the plastic wire hanger that came with the Hemma was too small to fit over the end of the planter hook.

To fix this, I simply cut the end off of the hook with a small hacksaw. The metal was very soft and this took only seconds.  If you don’t have a hacksaw, you could possibly use heavy duty wire cutters to cut the end off.

These hanging kits are designed to hold hanging planters which are pretty heavy and come with the parts to install on either a stud or directly into drywall.  The drywall anchor is a spring toggle bolt, which is capable of hanging a lot of weight. This is a bit overkill for this project, but it doesn’t hurt. For other projects, you may want to check out which kind of drywall anchor would be right for you. To install this toggle bolt, I used a half-inch spade drill bit to drill a hole in the ceiling large enough to accept the toggle bolt when it is folded.

Once the hole has been drilled, simply insert the toggle bolt and screw the hook until it is tight against the ceiling.

We planned to power the light using a power socket under the kitchen cabinets by the sink but we didn’t want the plug just hanging down from the ceiling for two reasons; 1) Because it is unsightly and 2) because the Hemma wire was several feet too long. What we decided to do was to run the wire inside our cabinets and leave the extra wire on top of the cabinet. To do this, we used a larger drill bit to drill a hole bottom shelf and the top of the cabinets as close to the back corner as possible.

A 1-inch spade drill bit which was just wide enough to handle the plug.

We threaded the wire through the holes and tied a knot just before the bottom hole leaving enough on the other side to reach the plug under the cabinets. This knot should prevent any extra wire from coming through the hole.

To keep the wire out of the way and tidy inside the cabinet, we used small nails to tack it to the back side of the cabinet facing. This also help rout the wire neatly around the inner shelves.

We got a shade from a local Habitat for Humanity ReStore for $2.00. These stores are great because they have a wide variety of random construction pieces and furniture for great prices and the money goes to help Habitat for Humanity. The particular share we got was a bit too big to fit on the screw part of the hemma, so I filed down some of the plastic on the hemma’s light socket to make some room. I was only able to thread a couple of threads on the socket with the screw piece, but that was plenty to hold the shade.

All in all, the IKEA Hemma proved to be a great solution for us. There are tons of really great examples out there using it as well. It allows you to be creative and still coming up with a professional look.  If you have used the Hemma for a DIY lighting project, we’d love to see what you did! Leave us a comment with info and a link.

For the design, I was inspired by two owls.  First I liked this guy from iStockphoto.  You can definitely see the similarities.  Second I was inspired by this owl on Disney’s Family Fun:

Of course, I liked the spin on the word always as “owl-ways”.  I think the pencil idea is great too, but I had already bought some sour crybaby gumballs.  I am planning to put the gumballs I already purchased over the eyeballs of the owl.  Here is the owl I created:

I have it two to a page to make for easier copying and distribution.  I will put my email on the back of each owl valentine so students can contact me in the future if they need to for any reason.  I also intentionally kept it as a line drawing so students can color it in if they wish.  Enjoy the freebie!  Happy Valentine’s Day!

Overall I was pleased with this purchase, so when Adam needed new glasses as well, we returned to EyeBuyDirect for another purchase. I definitely learned a few things my first time ordering online, so I felt more comfortable with this second purchase.  I am in no way affiliated with EyeBuyDirect.  For my first order, I chose EyeBuyDirect over other popular choices like Zenni Optical or  $39 Dollar Glasses because after adding my prescription lens with a tint they were the cheapest choice.  Many online eyeglass sellers can be misleading because they don’t share upfront the cost of adding a prescription lens to the frame you choose.  Make sure you do your research with whoever you choose.  The second time around I decided to go with EyeBuyDirect again because of this.  During the holiday season, they offer 50% off Gift Vouchers (I don’t know when this offer will expire).  You can only use one voucher per order and it is a one time deal, meaning you cannot reuse any of your unused voucher money.  It is smart to put your order together first to see how much voucher money you will need.

Adam and I already had an order in place for 4 pairs, that’s right, FOUR pairs of glasses.  He wanted three pairs; an everyday pair, a computer use only pair, and a sport sunglasses pair.  I was putting in an order for a second pair of everyday glasses because I have the tendency to break my glasses.  The last time that happened I was without glasses for over a month.  I figure (for me) a backup pair is a necessity.  This brought our order total to around $158.00.  Since the gift vouchers come in $20-$100 values (and you can’t use more than one), I went ahead and purchased a $100 voucher for Adam to use on the order.  It was supposed to be sent instantly to my email.  So I waited.  And waited.  And waited!  Finally I contacted customer service and had a surprisingly lovely chat.  (I removed names and personal information from the chat log. You can also see the quirky files that were on my desktop at the time.)

The customer service person resolved the issue by giving my gift voucher redemption code directly.  Thank goodness!  Adam promptly placed our order.

Although our order total is only $61.37, you have to keep in mind that I paid $50 for the voucher, so in actuality we spent $111.37.  This means we spend $27.84 on average for each pair of prescription glasses.  Not too shabby!

Oh, I almost forgot.  EyeBuyDirect offers “loyalty dollars” so I was able to save an additional $3 because of my previous purchase.  They also gave me a code to share on facebook, twitter, or other social media that will save you 15% and give me $5 off when it is used.  If you are interested, my EyeBuyDirect coupon code to share for 15% off is: IFT2Q1B7BB

Happy eyeglass shopping!  Be sure to read my tips for ordering glasses online here.  I will post part two to this review once my order arrives.  I can’t wait!

1. Get an updated eye exam.  It is no good buying new glasses if your prescription information is different from your last visit.
2. Have your doctor measure your Pupillary Distance (PD).  This measurement from one pupil to the next is generally recorded in millimeters (mm).  Eye doctors will take this measurement but they will not share it unless you ask.  Ask for your PD measurement!  Write it down.
3. If you do not already own a pair of glasses, try on glasses at the doctor’s office.  Write down the name and style of the glasses you like so you can look up the measurement specification of those glasses online later.  The alternative to this is to measure (in millimeters) the overall distance of the frame, the bridge width, and the width of each lens using a ruler.  Write these numbers down.  If you already have glasses, you can measure the glasses you already own or look up those measurements online.  For example, I found the specs to my previous pair of “Thalia Amada” glasses here.  To acquaint yourself with common eyeglass measurements, visit sites like this.
4. Have your eye doctor print off your prescription information so you can put in your order right away.
5. Set aside a couple of hours. No joke!  Adam and I perused through all the eyeglass selections for much longer than we anticipated.  We ended up using EyeBuyDirect.  There are also similar sites like Zenni Optical or  $39 Dollar Glasses.  We went with EyeBuyDirect because their final costs were the cheapest with the glasses options we wanted.  Read about our experience with EyeBuyDirect here.
6. Find glasses that match your measurement specs. This is where I went awry with my first order.  I figured the 126mm total lens width of the glasses I wanted to order was close enough to the 120mm of my current glasses.  Wrong!  My driving glasses fall down to the tip of my nose if my head moves too quickly forward.  Pay attention to the sizes no matter how much you like the frame (or the price)!  The glasses you order will not look good if they do not fit your face.
7. Put in your order using your prescription information.  Triple check the numbers you type in.  Adam and I checked each other’s information twice just to be safe. Yay for a quadruple check.
8. Look for coupon codes.  After you place an order, EyeBuyDirect gives their customers a coupon code to share with friends and family that saves you $5 whenever someone uses the code.  Our code for 15% off at EyeBuyDirect is: IFT2Q1B7BB.  You can also check out their gift vouchers if the offer is still valid, but be sure to read about using gift vouchers here.
9. Place your order and expect to wait.  Even ordering glasses through a doctor’s office can take several weeks.

I hope your experience ordering glasses online goes well!  Read about my experience here.

The camera I grabbed was iHome brand basic webcam for around $15.  Most webcams will work with this system from what I can tell. I literally did no research beforehand, which I do not recommend. I got very lucky that the camera I chose worked without much trouble (which practically NEVER happens for me).  I highly suggest checking to make sure the hardware will work before buying this or any other camera for this application.

The program I am using is called ZoneMinder, which is a fully featured open source CCTV security system .  It was written by someone who had a similar experience to me.  This program allows you to have multiple cameras which can be set to only record when they detect motion, and you can even break the camera images into separate zones of detection. This program can also integrate with X10 hardware to control all sorts of toys.  All of this is hosted on a web server so you can access it from anywhere in the world if you desire. I’m only going to set up something locally to only record if motion is detected.

Again, you want to make sure your  hardware will work with the program, so head over to the ZoneMinder Wiki hardware compatibility list as well as the UVCvideo compatibility list since ZoneMinder can use the UCVvideo drivers for linux.

My camera happened to work with the UCVvideo drivers, so I had to install that first. You can skip this section if you already have a working camera.  To begin with I had to install patchUtils form synaptic. You can do the same with the command below:

sudo apt-get install patchUtils

Then I downloaded and installed the UCVvideo drivers [1 ]

git clone git://linuxtv.org/media_build.git
cd media_build
./build
make install

At this point I kept having a bit of a problem, but I found the answer on another blog. This involved running two commands to actually insert the UCV modules:

sudo depmod -a
modprobe uvcvideo

Everyone will need the following commands to install the dependencies for ZoneMinder. Again, it runs a webserver, so there are a few important dependencies to be installed. Luckily I found a good tutorial to help figure out what all I would need.

sudo apt-get install apache2 php5-mysql libapache2-mod-php5 mysql-server
sudo apt-get install ffmpeg libarchive-tar-perl libarchive-zip-perl libdate-manip-perl libdevice-serialport-perl
sudo apt-get install libjpeg62 libmime-perl libstdc++6 libwww-perl zlib1g

At this point, you *may* need to reboot for Apache to configure correctly. I didn’t, but the author of the tutorial I used did.
Now, finally we can install ZoneMinder itself. I installed it form synaptic, but you can get updated installations form the ZoneMInder website. Otherwise run the following:

sudo apt-get install zoneminder

After installing ZoneMinder, you now need to configure and start Apache:

sudo ln -s /etc/zm/apache.conf /etc/apache2/conf.d/zoneminder.conf
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 force-reload
sudo adduser www-data video

At this point, open Firefox and go to the ZoneMinder dashboard by visiting

http://localhost/zm

Now before I could Add a new monitor (add my camera to ZoneMInder) I had to use another program to connect my camera to ZoneMinder. I found a good video series that explains the steps for installing and configuring my camera and ZoneMinder.  The program I needed was mjpg_streamer which you can get and install from sourceforge.
Of course to install this, you can just double-click the .deb file and install it as normal.
Now you have to run mjpg_streamer from the commandline using the following command:

mjpg_Streamer -i “input_uvc.so -d /dev/video0 -y -r 640×480 -f” -o “output_http.so -p 8080″

A short explanation here: “-d /dev/video0″  is the device you want to use. To find out which device your camera is, enter “ls /dev/video*” into the terminal. If you only have one camera, then it will pop up as the only result. Use that address. -y stands for YUYV format MPEG files. “-r 640×480″ attempts to set the resolution. My camera technically supports this resolution, however, that is if you have the correct drivers, which I do not. The -o “output_http.so -p 8080″ means that you are going to stream the video feed to port 8080 on this machine.

Additionally, you can add the flag “-b” to this command to run it in the background. If you do this, you have to manually kill mjpg_streamer when you want to close it.

killall mjpg_streamer

If you didn’t get any errors, we can check to see if the video is streaming correctly. Open a new tab in Firefox and go to

http://localhost:8080/?action=stream

If you see video, then it is working. If not, go back and double-check you’ve followed all my instructions correctly. If that doesn’t solve your problem, post on the ZoneMInder or UVC forums. I honestly do not know enough to be able to troubleshoot any more than I am explaining in this guide.

So now that your camera is streaming video, we can connect it to ZoneMinder (FINALLY!) So, go back to the ZoneMinder dashboard in your Firefox browser ( http://localhost/zm ) and click “Add New Monitor”. A window will pop up that looks like this make your values match the ones seen in this image):

Name this monitor whatever you like (no spaces or special characters), change the “Source Type” to “Remote”, change the function to Modect, check “enabled”  then click the “Source” tab. This window should look like this, expect with blank textbooks:

Fill in the textbooks as I have in the example image above. Basically, you are telling ZoneMinder where to find the streaming video. The “remote Host Name” should be “localhost” since you are using the same machine. Port should be the same value as what you used in the mjpg_streamer command above (8080). The “Remote Host Path” is everything after the backslash form the web address we used to test the camera above “?action=stream”.  Now notice the Capture Width and Height is different from what the mjpg_streamer command was.  This was an issue with my camera. It could not handle the 620×480 resolution and it defaulted to what is seen here. Be sure that the resolution in these boxes matches the resolution of your video stream. You can check this by looking at the page title of the webpage we used to test the camera “http://localhost:8080/?action=stream” It should read something like “(JPEG Image, 320×240 pixels) – Mozilla Firefox”. Those are the values you should use here. Click “Save” when you are finished editing these settings.

That popup should close and the ZoneMinder dashboard should refresh. If everything is working correctly, your new monitor should have been added. If the text “localhost” under the “Source”  column is red, then you have a problem and need to make sure your settings are correct, and that mjpg_streamer is running. Otherwise, the text should be green.  Click the motor name to open a live view your new security camera.

With the current settings, it will only record an event if it detects motion. When this happens, the dashboard of ZoneMinder will add numbers in the “Events” column. Click this number to view the event. (Click “Refresh” on the dashboard if it doesn’t update those columns fast enough for you). This will now play back the video of the specific event. The window below shows an example of what an event would look like.

That is it! We are finished. Now I have a smart motion triggered security cam that will archive footage if anyone goes near our cars. Your mileage may vary of course depending on the cameras, lighting, etc. of your particular situation. I was surprised how easy all of this actually was! I’m going to play around with this a bit more and see if I can make it a full fledged security system for our house.

If you have had success with this, please post a comment and tell us about it.

UPDATED with new app (see end of post for the new addition).

Before Heading Out:

Before going out for the night, you have to check the weather and the skies. There are several apps I like to use for this. Droid Clear Sky is one such app. It gives a simple familiar cloud cover forecast using data from Clear Dark Skies. It is also Open Source so go check out the code if you like.

Another app for checking if it will be a good night to go stargazing which has a lot of other information as well is Astro Panel. It gives much more information than DroidSky such as humidity and transparency among other stats.

My favorite app by far for forecasting cloud cover has to be Where Its Cloudy by Aquila Systems. This app is fast and very accurate, showing you live updates of data from NOAA satellites showing visible and infrared (of course use the infrared at night) maps of water vapor (clouds).

You also should check out the Skyweek app which let’s you know dates and times of interesting astronomical events. When is Io being eclipsed by Jupiter? The Skyweek app will let you know.

SpaceWx is a great program that collects and displays tons of current information from several sources such as Rice University and NOAA among many others. Topics include graphs of everything from solar wind to current air temperatures. My favorite part is the link to the NOAA Aurora predictions (in the magnetosphere section). It isn’t often we see auroras in the Carolinas, but I would hate to miss the chance.

Neat Stuff in the Sky:

A fun past time is satellite spotting. The best time for this is at dawn or twilight, but with the help of a few apps you can always be aware of what satellites are overhead and whether or not they are visible.

Droid Sat is a great augmented reality satellite tracking app. Use it as a window to the sky and visually track a few satellites and the ISS (international Space Station) as they cross the sky. One of my favorite things about this app is that it is open source. I’ve been wanting to check the code out pretty badly, but I know I won’t have time to play with it.

Satellite AR is another great augmented reality app which gives you tons of potentially visible satellites to track. Also, clicking on each satellite can load a webpage about that particular satellite or piece of space junk.

Heavens Above is another great app for satellite and space junk spotting. It has a nice widget and  the ability to alarm you for possible sightings.

Iridium Flares, reflections off the Iridium satellite phone satellites, are by far the most frequent and easiest satellites to spot.  Two great apps that will help you spot them are Iridium Flare Forecast and Iridium Flares.

Iridium Flare Forecast is nice because it allows you to automatically scan your location based of your wireless cell tower location, or GPS and allows you to add a flyby event to your calendar.

Iridium Flares is good because it shows you a google map overlay with expected flybys and can be set up to scan and alarm you when flybys occur. It also has a night mode to make sure not to ruin you night vision.

Meteor Shower Calender is a neat little app that helps you catch shooting stars! It will alarm you when meteor showers are visible or at their peak, giving you plenty of time to plan ahead and spot at least a few meteors.

When You Finally Get Outside:

Once you get out into the night and begin looking at the skies, there are a couple of must-have apps I always use for setting up the scope or identifying things in the sky.

A good red flashlight is invaluable, and instead of carrying around a separate device, why not use you phone? The Astronomy Flashlight is great because it doesn’t require any permissions. There are several choices for red flashlights, but others often ask for shady permissions such as making phone calls or reading you address book.  The AstronomyFlashlight is simple and has several options. Pick from red, grey or white colored screen, and adjust the brightness of this choice using an on-screen slider.

I also like the use of a level for leveling out my telescope. One that I have found useful (though it does not have a night mode) is Spirit Level Plus. It is simple and effective and does all I need it to.

To calculate the magnification of my scope using different eyepieces, I use Telescope Calculator by Skyworks.

For polar aligning, I like to use PolarFinder (SigmaFinder for residents of the Southern Hemisphere)

You can use also the polar finding portion of Astro Tools. It will also show you the hour angle of Polaris and what to look for in the sky.  This app is another that can use the orientation sensor and shows a nice star chart. It seems a bit unfinished as of yet but it seems to be coming along well.

Star Odyssey is a neat app that gives you more than just the names of stars, but other facts as well. Stars can be sorted by distance, name or brightness. And you can even filter for stars with planets.

Of course no list would be complete without mentioning Google Sky Map. This app allows you to use your phone as a window to the heavens. It labels the stars you are pointing at, and has a great search function. The night mode makes it easy to seek out and identify objects in the sky without blinding yourself.

A completely mind blowing and beautiful app is The Invisible Universe which again uses orientation sensors in your phone to show you things in the sky, but displays results of Gamma ray, Xray, far infrared and other telescope findings. These different frequency ranges allow us to see amazing details the visible spectrum just cannot provide such as stars forming in thick gas clouds and much more. This app is truly artful and a must have for anyone even slightly interested in science.

Miscellaneous Useful Apps:

And finally, here few additional apps I like to use to help find my way around the sky and to troubleshoot sensor readings when my google sky map, or other readings don’t match up with the sky.

GPS Status is a really great app that can help diagnose GPS issues.

Sensor List is a simple direct output of all the sensors on your phone. This is invaluable for verifying your sensors are working correctly, which is a requirement of many of the apps. Mentioned in this list.

New Compass (AD) is a good app for testing the compass sensor in the phone, as well as just to get my bearings.

Sun Surveyor Lite is a neat app that shows the sun’s orientation and angle throughout the day.

UPDATED:  I just found another great app called SkEye. Basically you strap your phone to your telescope and align it with a known celestial object. From then on, your phone acts as an accurate guide to everything your scope is pointing to (PUSHTO guide). This is far more useful than any other sky mapping app out there.

Of course, there are many other apps out there, and many I have not yet tried. These are the ones I have tried and use repeatedly. If you enjoy using these apps, be sure to pop for the paid or upgraded versions of them if they are available!

The next step was to create the payload box. The professor had done this before so he gave us tips on using foam core poster board, hot glue and HVAC tape. We chose to cover ours in mylar by applying a spray adhesive to the surface, then laying a sheet of mylar on it, and using credit cards to squeegee it flat as best as possible. The mylar was applied to the insides of the box before gluing, and the outside afterward.

The inside was filled with a medium density foam from a second hand art store (the scrap Exchange in Durham is AMAZING!).  The GPS was velcroed to the top of the box. A hole was cut on both the inside and outside of the box in the mylar just where the GPS was so it could receive signal.

The launch was Saturday May 22nd at 12:40pm. There were scattered showers and a thunderstorm. Just before the launch, 5 “hot hands” packs were thrown in the center of the box, foam was added, and the box was taped up for launch.

The Carolina Edge of Space guys had their GPS/HAM radio setup sending APRS tracking data. All the payloads got a HOBO Data logger with internal and external temperature readings. There were 3 cameras in total.

We launched at 12:40pm, just as the rain turned to drizzle.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUTKn0rQM5g]

Since we launched in the drizzle, and just before a thunderhead hit, all of our cameras got wet and subsequently froze upon entering the lower temperatures of the stratosphere. All the cameras eventually stopped working, The one in our box stopped just inside the cloud. The other two stopped just after passing the cloud top, looking face first at the thunderhead. You can just see the beginning of the blackness of space behind the cloud. View the entire Flickr set here!

The arduino payload didn’t record data either. Just before launch I tested to make sure it was recording data, and it was. however, a last minute addition of a second parallel battery pack may have overloaded the already hot 5V voltage regulator. It seems that just as I connected the last battery, the entire circuit shut off and on due to an internal thermal overload switch in the voltage regulator. I didn’t notice this because as it was toggling, I saw the “reset” light flashing on the arduino. This LED is also connected to the SD card data line, so it looked exactly as if the SD card was being written to.

The only data that was recovered was of the data logger in our payload.  The internal temperature stayed a toasty 130 degrees F (which added to the problem of why we got no data.) The external temp showed a very good profile of the balloon punching through the tropopause before plumeting back to earth.

External Temperature

Overall, the balloon went 74,642ft. before the balloon popped. It flew across two counties and the state line before landing.  I exported the APRS data to a Google Earth KMZ File.

Google Earth export of the APRS data

It happened to land in the yard of a man who worked in the photo lab at NASA during the 60s and 70s. He told us some of the stories from their lab, and showed us large prints of iconic photos he had developed. One in particular was of a lunar earth rise!

A second launch was planned for Fall of 2010. Luckily it faired better than this launch. I’ll post the vids and pics of that adventure soon.

Working with a professor at my college and Carolina Edge of Space in May of 2010 I, along with a small group of friends, sent a weather balloon 74,642 feet into the sky.  This post is mainly about the payload I designed, built and tested for the project.

This project was inspired by many seen recently online where students have been sending cheap payloads into the stratosphere. It started around December 2009 when we all met for the first time to discuss the project. It turns out that one of the professors in the Earth Sciences department focuses on remote sensing (gathering data about earth from satellites, etc.) who had done some weather balloon projects in the past. We all got together to discuss a possible launch.

Originally, the group included a lot of people, however, as time went on, fewer and fewer people showed up at the meetings or participated in the email conversations. There would be several payloads. Carolina Edge of Space would have a GPS tracking radio, the professor hosting this would carry two cameras in a payload with a HOBO data logger, one Grad student would build an “ash detector” and my group would build something to take a multitude of measurements.

First the payload sensor were picked out. Of course we wanted pictures. The professor provided us with Nikon Coolpix digital cameras and 2GD SD cards. These were chosen because they have a built in intervalometer and were very small. I tested the camera in my freezer (which gets down to -20 degrees Celsius (-40F) and usually got about 2 full hours of pictures every 30 seconds before the battery died. this was plenty as we expected about a 2 or 3 hour flight. Turning off the flash and increasing the time between pictures helped extend the life of the battery.

As for the custom payload, we wanted a barometer to see the change in air pressure, accelerometers to see how hard the payload would be whipped around in the winds, some ozone sensors and such to measure concentrations, a GPS so we would have a good clock as well Latitude, longitude and altitude. What seemed like a great custom embedded systems project turned into a simpler Arduino-based project as time and money became an issue.

I tried to get nice ozone sensors, however, everything was way too expensive and none of the companies I contacted were willing to donate to our cause. Then I remembered that I had seen some neat gas sensors at Futurlec, such as ozone sensors, and “air quality” (what ever that is…) that were quite cheap.  I grabbed a couple of each to play around with. I tested the Ozone sensor by placing it inside a bag with a running DC motor. The brushes of the DC motor arc as they move across the sections of the commutator and ionize the air. This effectively produces a bit of ozone (its that almost metallic smell DC motors or high voltage electronics give off.) The graph below shows the results of this test as raw ADC values from an arduino. Here you can download the raw ADC values and graph from this test in Open Document Spreadsheet format.

Testing the Ozone Sensor

I also bought a few different barometric pressure sensors. The one I bought specifically for the weather balloon was hard to use as it was a differential and had to have a known pressure on one side to compare to. It also has two output pins which required an op-amp circuit to output the difference in pressure. Testing proved this was not the easiest sensor to use as I didn’t figure out the best way to seal off one side of the sensor. Instead I settled for a sensor that had a built-in vacuum on one side, and a single output pin, the MPXA6115A . This new pressure sensor would only go down to 15kPa (about 33,000ft I think) but I assumed that if we took external temperature as well, we could correlate it with the pressure up to a point, and when the senor stopped working, we could calculate the pressure based on the temperature data using a barometric formula.

Additionally, we wanted to use a GPS to get altitude data. I’ve been told that some GPS unit manufacturers limit the capabilities of their units to below 60,000 ft and a certain speed for safety reasons but I couldn’t find any info on that for my particular unit, the San Jose Navigation FV-M8 GSP module.

Acceleration was also something we wanted to measure. We used a Sparkfun ADXL300 3 axis accelerometer. Actually it had a 2 axis gyroscope built in as well, but we ran out of analog input pins on the Arduino and wanted to keep this as small and simple as possible, so we left those off.

All data was stored to a 2GB SD card.

I breadboarded the GPS, accelerometer, barometer, and gyroscope package and slapped together a simple SD card interface. The libraries I used were TinyGPS and fat16lib (for SD card use). Weather_Balloon_Code and schematic in case you’d like to build it yourself.

Schematic of the hardware

I flew this in a modified model rocket. I had two flights, one with an E-15-4 engine and the other with an E-30-4 engine. Here’s the Excel file of each of those two launches that show the values and plotted graphs of each flight.

First Flight Raw ADC data and graphs.

Second Flight raw ADC data and Graphs

I’m not sure which one used which engine. Here you can see a graph of the raw ADC pressure sensor values from one of the rocket launches. The air pressure decreases as the rocket altitude increases. You can see the wind and other affects from the rocket  sitting on the launch pad, then then drastic drop in pressure at the launch.  The ramp up on the end of the graph is when the rocket was floating back to the ground under a parachute. Calculations showed it went about 600ft I think.

Barometer data from Rocket test

To calculate the height the rocket went, we simply need to know a few little things about the set-up. (This gets a bit mathy, but not too bad). First, we knoow that the Arduino was set up to use a 5V ADC reference voltage, and it was set to do 10-bit conversions. Knowing that we can calculate the voltage that each raw ADC unit represents.

ADC Voltage / Max number the bits can represent

Formula 1

Formula 2

Multiply this by the lowest barometer reading we got (794 raw ADC units)

Formula 3

This is the voltage that the sensor was outputting. Now we look at the datasheet of the barometer (MPXA6115A) to find a conversion formula from volts to a measure of air pressure kPa.

Formula 4

Solve this for P since we already know the voltage:

Formula5

Now we can convert the kPa into a value we can use in an online Pressure to Altitude calculator such as inches of mercury. (1 kPa = 0.295333727 inches of mercury)

Formula 6

Now inserting this number into the online Pressure to Altitude calculator, we can get a rough altitude above sea level for the rocket, about 1280.6ft (390.3 meters).  This is above Sea-level, not the point that we launched. I happen to know that the height of the ground at the launch site is between 500-700ft  (150-215 meters).  So I subtract the average height (600ft) of the ground from the Altitude calculation I got previously to get:

1280ft – 600ft = Rocket height of about 680 feet.

*Formula graphics provided by this Online LaTeX Equation Editor.