I’ve recently gotten into astronomy and astrophotography since I got an 8″ telescope for my birthday in 2010. Since then I have found that my Android phone is a must have tool! This is a list my favorite and most useful Android apps for astronomy. All of the ones mentioned here are free or have a free version. I suggest donating or upgrading on all of them if you like them to help compensate the programmers for their hard work.
UPDATED with new app (see end of post for the new addition).
With the payload tested in a rocket, everything looked ready to go. I took it off the breadboard and built it onto a strip board PCB to make everything sturdy.
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.
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.
Many people think the fronts of cars look life faces. There is even an entire Flickr set devoted to car faces! Well, ever since I saw my house for this first time, I thought my house look like a face. The windows are perfect eyes and the garage looks like a mouth.
I needed to put my anthropomorphic house theory to the test. (Yes, I had to look up how to spell anthropomorphic.) For Halloween, I decided to use my house face palette to create a scary face. Adam and I had different visions for our beauty, so we sketched out our ideas using paint to end our squabble. Yes we are that anal retentive. Our ideas were:
Idea 1: White Pointy Teeth with Black Background
Idea 2: White Square Teeth with Black Background
Idea 3: Black Square Teeth
Idea 4: Black Pointy Teeth
Although we thought Idea 1 would likely look the best, we decided to go with Idea 4. We figured cutting out black teeth would be easier than trying to create a black background. This is how we did it.
Materials:
Tools:
We cut the edges off each garbage bag to create black squares of material. From there, we cut out isosceles triangle shapes to use as the teeth. We didn’t measure any sizes, but we did use the square pattern in our garage door to measure sizes.
In the two top windows, we added a pupil to add to the eye effect. Using the double sided tape, we put up each tooth one at a time.
Because we didn’t officially measure the teeth sizes, the last two teeth had to be cut smaller to make them fit. We did this to the last two teeth so there wouldn’t be one tooth that was noticeably smaller than the rest. This way the overall visual sizes of the teeth look balanced.
More double sided tape was used on the bottom teeth than the top because we were concerned water or wind might more easily remove these teeth. The bags had a bit of static cling which also helped them stick to the garage door nicely.
We lost daylight pretty quickly, but I couldn’t help but snap a nighttime shot. Of course that adds to the drama of our scary faced house!
Here is a daytime shot from the next day.
Overall this was an easy and fun project. It only took Adam and I less than an hour to complete the entire project, including creating idea sketches in paint. Can you turn your house into a face? Send us your results!
Our future plans involve laying down hardwood in our entire home. Since the carpet that currently exists still has some life left, I don’t want to replace it until it is necessary (oh the suspense is killing me; but I think it is practical to do major redesigns when they are warranted and not just because you want to). Anyway, my point is we are going to need to start building up a rug collection for when we have hardwoods.
Because there is tons of fun in doing-it-yourself, I scoured the internet for diy rug options. I was pleasantly surprised at all the choices I found. They really push the boundaries of the the term “rug“. Because sewing doesn’t agree with me and braiding/crocheting seems time consuming – these are options I think would be simplest to do.
Plywood Rugs
I discovered my most favorite unexpected rug option at Sugar Bee Crafts -you can make a ‘rug’ out of plywood! Oh the options for a plywood rug! You can stain it or paint it (or both). You can use stencils or tape. You can make it fit your style. (The vinyl rug below has the same customization options).
At our old place we had a low pile carpet. Office chairs roll nicely over this carpet. Our new house’s carpet, not so much. This plywood rug might just be the ticket for this space!
Vinyl Rugs
The thing I love the most about vinyl rugs is the potential of putting a remnant piece of vinyl to good use. Based on the tutorials I read, any vinyl will work; however a thicker vinyl is a must. You can either paint vinyl like Addicted 2 Decorating’s post (pictured below) and Design Dazzle’s post or…
Or you can cover vinyl with fabric like In My Own Style.
I am also in love with Momtastic’s quatrefoil version of a fabric vinyl rug.
Fabric Rugs
Staying on a fabric roll, fabric rugs also have a lot of simple, diy options. You can simply add a backing and lining to fabric you heart like High-Heeled Foot in the Door’s chevron beaut.
Rugs are not just meant for indoors. An outdoor burlap rug is featured on ohdeedoh’s how to post. One of the easiest rug options is to update an existing fabric rug with a little paint like Sarah Wandering did here.
Or like A Little Bite of Everything’s Moroccan inspired design here. It is fab and super simple. The only color painted on was the white for the pattern. LOVE IT!
Roll Up Blind Rug
To add the cherry to this post, the easiest DIY rug I found was Re-nest’s idea of converting a roll up blind to a floor covering. Very chic!
So which rug am I going to make? Right now I want to make them ALL! They are added to my ever growing home to do list…
