Pretty cool, although it's polluting so hopefully it wouldn't become too popular (probably not).
"And because such diminutive payloads don’t pose a danger to aircraft" even though they are small and wouldn't make a plane crash, I can imagine they would cause some damage if they ever enter a jet engine, although that would be unlucky as they would mostly fly higher than aircraft. I also wouldn't like it to fall on my head, but with the solar panels as depicted and the small weight I suppose it could somewhat glide.
It also reminds me of the recent incident where an object (potentially a weather balloon) struck a plane windscreen and caused significant damage to it, as well as injuring one of the flight crew. I don't know if it would cause the same amount of damage given it's size, but hitting any solid object at cruising speed is sure to leave a mark
It is super cool - we managed to launch one on a pair of Aliexpress wedding baloons filled with helium and it tracked all the way from Europe to South Korea, for about a week.
It even breached the arctic circle and entered the jet stream for a bit (140+ km/h ground speed) :-)
Isn't H2 better because better lift and being a molecule of two hydrogen atoms it is not quite as slippery as helium and quite easy to make?
From wikipedia "lifting gas"
"Helium is the second lightest gas (0.1786 g/L, 14% the density of air, at STP). For that reason, it is an attractive gas for lifting as well.
A major advantage is that this gas is noncombustible. But the use of helium has some disadvantages, too:
The diffusion issue shared with hydrogen (though, as helium's molecular radius, 138 pm, is smaller, it diffuses through more materials than hydrogen[4])."
The diffusion is the main advantage of using helium, it takes ~3x longer to leak out, which directly affects flight time.
Hydrogen is actually harder to buy in my experience, helium is sold everywhere for cheap in small canisters for parties, whereas the second requires like, industrial welding suppliers that will want to sell you a large tank for a few thousand or making your own electrolyser and compressor. There's no common use case for it you could piggyback on.
and at this scale it seems like the hazards of h2 would be pretty minor. You're not exactly going to have a Hindenburg situation with only a couple dozen liters of H2.
It really seems like there is no downside to this, other than the minuscule risk of a low-altitude puncture + spark causing a fire, and even there the exposure is small because the amount of hydrogen gas is so much small.
Not to mention that hydrogen is free for anyone who has water and a power source.
I wish the regulations around HAB were not so lighter-than-air gas centric. Hot air balloons are much more accessible, especially solar heated hot air balllons. But they have much less lift per volume and so the FAA FAR 101 rules basically say they all have to be treated as the type where you inform the FAA beforehand and then every hour about their position among other things.
>any balloon that is moored to the surface of the earth or an object thereon and that has a diameter of more than 6 feet or a gas capacity of more than 115 cubic feet.
And the regulations on tethered balloons end up being even stricter than letting them go.
As well they should be. The tether represents far more of a risk to aviation than the actual baloon. Not only it is much larger a collision risk, it cuts through GA airspace where all the delicate stuff flies.
I’ve been working on a hobby project to send a Raspberry Pi into the stratosphere (nothing really novel) but with all custom software. The entire process, hardware, and stack is documented on the GitHub [1]. Essentially all the software and major components are purchased. I’m just waiting for the spring and then start some tests with balloons, helium mixtures, and iron out any regulatory issues. If this interest you or you have any experience would love help or contributions. The launch will happen in Tennessee.
I saw you were looking for help sourcing things like balloons and gas. https://groups.io/g/GPSL/ worried be a great place to go and ask for help with that, if you haven't already.
This is way cooler than I expected. I had no idea you could do near-space stuff for the price of a dinner, or that ham radio networks like WSPR could track something globally without satellites. Feels like one of those “old tech + clever hacks” projects that shouldn’t work but somehow does. Also kind of wild that a party balloon can end up halfway around the world.
I wonder what your liability would be in the event your balloon were to be struck by a commercial aircraft and cause injury to the flight crew or passengers?
They basically can shoot (not only throwing!) entire frozen chicken cadavers into engines with zero damage.
The only way they managed break the entire engine was to place little explosives on the turbine wings. Even that didn't cause a fatal disintegration of the jet engine.
Somewhere on YT there's a super entertaining video from a test facility.
> I’m a little puzzled about the balloons’ telemetry messages received on the WSPR network, as they have been few and far between.
But wouldn't there be a way to send messages to Starlink satellites instead of WSPR? Is it a problem of power consumption? (It would be great to be able to transmit images, not just GPS pings).
Starlink is totally oit of picobaloon range by orders of magnitude - we are talking hundreds of mW at most.
At the same time it is true the board (rpi pico usually) could totally support a camera or other high bandwidth instruments - it just does not have the bandwidth to send the data over wspr, possibly with the exception of some flags based on local processing.
AFAIK some poeple have built dual APRS & WSPR pico baloons, but you will still get pictures back only over populated areas due to APRS having in general much shorter range than WSPR.
In the summer you could theoretically station-keep a few of these over a city for a few hours at least with proper wind and lift gas planning. Could be enough to fly a stripped town T1000e or similar meshtastic relay during a natural disaster
Thank you, I'm glad you agree they are nice! The artist is James Provost, he's done most of the illustrations for Hands On since we switched over from photography a few years ago (I'm the IEEE Spectrum editor responsible for the column).
Yep, cost effectiveness of project is amazing & really nice application for WSPR. WSPRnet for checking readings seems to be still online https://www.wsprnet.org/drupal/wsprnet/map .
If you keep the payload under 4 pounds I believe it's theoretically unregulated in the US except section 101.7 - don't create a hazard. I would still try to be approximately in compliance with part 101 though. Not a laywer.
pingou|27 days ago
"And because such diminutive payloads don’t pose a danger to aircraft" even though they are small and wouldn't make a plane crash, I can imagine they would cause some damage if they ever enter a jet engine, although that would be unlucky as they would mostly fly higher than aircraft. I also wouldn't like it to fall on my head, but with the solar panels as depicted and the small weight I suppose it could somewhat glide.
voidUpdate|27 days ago
NoiseBert69|26 days ago
It's not factor as long they are not crossing a specific size/weight - jet engines and windows from airplanes are tested to withstand a direct impact.
m4rtink|26 days ago
It even breached the arctic circle and entered the jet stream for a bit (140+ km/h ground speed) :-)
airbreather|26 days ago
From wikipedia "lifting gas"
"Helium is the second lightest gas (0.1786 g/L, 14% the density of air, at STP). For that reason, it is an attractive gas for lifting as well.
A major advantage is that this gas is noncombustible. But the use of helium has some disadvantages, too:
moffkalast|26 days ago
Hydrogen is actually harder to buy in my experience, helium is sold everywhere for cheap in small canisters for parties, whereas the second requires like, industrial welding suppliers that will want to sell you a large tank for a few thousand or making your own electrolyser and compressor. There's no common use case for it you could piggyback on.
mlsu|26 days ago
andrewla|26 days ago
Not to mention that hydrogen is free for anyone who has water and a power source.
SuperMouse|27 days ago
Why?
- You can repurpose 2.4GHz Wifi gear opening many doors
- You can easily include volunteers dumping data from HF into a IP sink for telemetry. TTGO offers boards with 2.4GHz LoRa.
- Theoretically you still can add a "low rate" 868MHz/433MHz and a "high rate" 2.4GHz for transmitting pictures and other stuff more quickly.
- BOM friendly. As the balloon might get lost you have to plan a bit for costs.
Neywiny|26 days ago
iberator|27 days ago
Ham radio basics
superkuh|26 days ago
https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/chapter-I/subchapter-F...
>any balloon that is moored to the surface of the earth or an object thereon and that has a diameter of more than 6 feet or a gas capacity of more than 115 cubic feet.
And the regulations on tethered balloons end up being even stricter than letting them go.
sandworm101|26 days ago
daemonologist|26 days ago
sciurus|27 days ago
https://arhab.org/
https://www.superlaunch.org/
nodesocket|26 days ago
[1] https://github.com/stratopi-org/stratopi
sciurus|26 days ago
I saw you were looking for help sourcing things like balloons and gas. https://groups.io/g/GPSL/ worried be a great place to go and ask for help with that, if you haven't already.
AtlasGains|27 days ago
ajxs|27 days ago
mkarliner|27 days ago
and AFAIK are the goto supplier for HAB (High Altitude Ballooning) enthusiasts.
buildsjets|26 days ago
https://komonews.com/news/local/weather-balloon-launched-in-...
HNisCIS|26 days ago
Note that there are operators running balloons several orders bigger still, like Aerostar. They're essentially flying mid size satellites
NoiseBert69|26 days ago
They basically can shoot (not only throwing!) entire frozen chicken cadavers into engines with zero damage.
The only way they managed break the entire engine was to place little explosives on the turbine wings. Even that didn't cause a fatal disintegration of the jet engine.
Somewhere on YT there's a super entertaining video from a test facility.
bambax|27 days ago
> I’m a little puzzled about the balloons’ telemetry messages received on the WSPR network, as they have been few and far between.
But wouldn't there be a way to send messages to Starlink satellites instead of WSPR? Is it a problem of power consumption? (It would be great to be able to transmit images, not just GPS pings).
radeeyate|27 days ago
m4rtink|26 days ago
At the same time it is true the board (rpi pico usually) could totally support a camera or other high bandwidth instruments - it just does not have the bandwidth to send the data over wspr, possibly with the exception of some flags based on local processing.
AFAIK some poeple have built dual APRS & WSPR pico baloons, but you will still get pictures back only over populated areas due to APRS having in general much shorter range than WSPR.
HNisCIS|26 days ago
ge96|26 days ago
IrishJourno|26 days ago
hasbot|27 days ago
NoSalt|26 days ago
As if we needed more junk in the ocean.
electsaudit0q|27 days ago
[deleted]
fix4fun|26 days ago
daemonologist|26 days ago