From geobra at att.net  Thu Oct 22 09:10:13 2009
From: geobra at att.net (Rich Mitchell)
Date: Thu, 22 Oct 2009 13:10:13 +0000
Subject: [McHUG] A Hamfest Tech Session
Message-ID: <102220091310.3815.4AE059B50003AED100000EE722230704929B0A02D29B9B0EBF0E9D0D010A09@att.net>

At this Sunday's hamfest of the CCARC our tech session will be about PICetSat modules hoping to culminate in a balloon launch of a module.  I have found the demo module that we had used to promote interest when we launched the first PICetSat.  This module ran on watch batteries and sensed temperature and light.  The original sensed temperature and pressure.  I have found the second pressure unit so if we build a new module perhaps we can incorporate the pressure module.  We are trying to put together some giveaway PICetSat kits, or at least partial kits.  I have ordered 10 08Ms from PHAnderson along with some thermisters.  I have about 7 TX433s on hand.  These are the main components of the PICetSat so if the order gets here in time we can put together some kits.

In hunting through my junk looking for the demo module I found the old Atlanticon 2007 Koch Method Morse Trainer kit, which was built on defective Rookie boards and is based on the PICAXE 08M.  Since the club is starting up a Morse Code class, if people want to try out the Koch method, we could make up a few of those kits using RadioShack perf boards or maybe some manhattan style construction techniques.  I will try to put that kit together and bring it to the tech session.

Rich - N3III


--
McHUG - Physical Computing ;) 
MicroController Ham User Group

From geobra at att.net  Mon Oct 26 09:40:24 2009
From: geobra at att.net (Rich Mitchell)
Date: Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:40:24 +0000
Subject: [McHUG] Tech Session Followup - These things actually work!
Message-ID: <102620091340.458.4AE5A6C8000498A9000001CA22218675169B0A02D29B9B0EBF0E9D0D010A09@att.net>

We were able to launch a balloon at the hamfest - actually 2 balloons - the first was a party balloon with Pat's business card attached.

Saturday night I had tried to build up new PICetSat Lite modules with 2 thermisters, for inside and outside temperature.  Through the night I built 3 of them.  They worked perfectly on the breadboard, but when they were transferred to the Radio Shack (now The Shack, I guess) I couldn't get the PICAXE to work.  (I'll try debugging when I've had a bit more sleep under my belt).  So we ended up launching the original model.  This is the one that originally flew over Jim Cross's table at a West Friendship hamfest several years ago when SimSAT 3 was about to happen.  Some interesting points about the flight.

We were using Party Balloon helium - readily available.
Power source was 2 3v watch batteries using a paper clamp to hold in place and connect
The packaging was 2 styrafoam coffee cups taped together

And yet the thing flew for at least 2 hours at which point we could no longer decipher its signal above the noise.  So PICetSat Lites will provide a good vehicle for experiments, like testing various types of packaging using inside and outside temperatures.  

Steve has posted the data on the K3PZN reflector and more comment about the flight.  The actual module is the one pictured on my website - home.att.net/~geobra/  (hasn't been updated since I moved and went from DSL back to dial-up). 

Rich N3III

--
McHUG - Physical Computing ;) 
MicroController Ham User Group

From patrick.l.kilroy at nasa.gov  Tue Oct 27 15:20:35 2009
From: patrick.l.kilroy at nasa.gov (Kilroy, Patrick L. (GSFC-5680))
Date: Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:20:35 -0500
Subject: [McHUG] [K3PZN-List] Hamfest and PICetSAT Flight > New Web Page
In-Reply-To: <20091025205615.16525bn9pdxf9b5c@webmail.qis.net>
References: <20091025205615.16525bn9pdxf9b5c@webmail.qis.net>
Message-ID: <F0D6AD19FBE27346BC5FBD7D34D1A07F1B84F5BFEE@NDMSSCC02.ndc.nasa.gov>

... New CarrollSat-1 Web Page ...

See http://simsat.net/carrollsat/

Includes spreadsheets with plots of Temp
Codes and Light Codes from the received
telemetry by Steve Beckman, N3SB, in light
of all the spoken QRM around him at the
time.  Amazing!

More postings of results are being added
day by day to the page.

Gary, Rich & Steve -- thanks for the good
work and the good words!  Please send me
updates and corrections to the web page.

Please forgive my cross-posting, a little
seeding will go far.  ;-)

Cheers,

Pat
N8PK


Mr. Patrick L. Kilroy
Integration & Test Manager
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Building 5, Mail Code 568
Greenbelt, Maryland 20771
Phone: +1-301-286-1984
E-mail: Patrick.L.Kilroy at nasa.gov
Web: http://patkilroy.com/simsat/4/ (outreach)


-----Original Message-----
From: n3sb at qis.net
Sent: Sunday, October 25, 2009 8:56 PM
To: k3pzn-list at mailman.qth.net
Subject: [K3PZN-List] Hamfest and PICetSAT Flight

Hi Folks;

Fortunately we had good weather for the Mason-Dixon
Hamfest today.  I think the hamfest went well; thanks
to everyone who came out to help!

Our Technical Presentation today featured Pat N8PK
and Rich N3III, who talked about Amateur Radio High-
Altitude Balloons.  Pat discussed all the planning
activities his team of students have been working in
preparation for the SimSat-4 launch, now scheduled
for Saturday October 31.  Rich showed off several
versions of the PICetSat modules he'd built, and
handed out some parts kits to the attendees.

The presentation culminated in a PICetSat Balloon
launch.  The payload was a PICAXE-based module that
contained a temperature sensor (a thermistor) and
a light sensor.  The downlink transmitter was a
10 milliwatt garage door opener transmitter module,
operating near 433.920 MHz.

The PICetSAT balloon flight was a huge success!  We
were able to copy the telemetry using HTs and rubber
duck antennas for over an hour!  Using Rich's Arrow
antenna, we copied over two hours of telemetry from
the launch site at the Ag Center.  The balloon took
a Southern flight path away from the Ag Center,
and based on signal strength measurements with the
beam antenna, may have turned a bit to the [east].

When the telemetry downlink signal faded below our
ability to copy, the balloon appeared to still be
in flight, and was probably still climbing, with a
good battery.

This was a great demonstration, and its going to
be really hard to top this demo at next years'
hamfest.

I've included the received telemetry below.  You
should be able to import this info into your
spreadsheet and plot the data too see what
PICetSAT was doing during its flight.  If anyone
was able to copy additional data frames, please
pass them along.  Rich may be able to give us
some help with translating the temperature
telemetry data to temperature values - either
deg C or F.  It might also be interesting to
perform some Fourier analysis on the Light sensor
data to determine if there was a predominant
flight capsule rotation rate.

73; Steve, N3SB

[snip]
[See the telemetry data on the CarrollSat web
page in the spreadsheet files offered. -Ed.]



