April302016 Meeting Notes

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Attending

Present: Rick, Cord, Dean, Jeffrey, Weston

  • Payload conversation, we are agreed to 6lb max. Tradeoff in $$ for helium/balloon.
  • Rough plan to set 6lb payload max, then shave ounces wherever we can near the end to minimize weight (as trade for max altitude)
  • Cord has friend Andrew Wilson who will attend in two weeks, he has extensive ham experience.
  • Dean described the bat tracking system he was using. 48 hour life on battery-powered radio beacons they'd glue to them. (recovery discussion)
  • Weston got the 900mhz serial pipe. RFD 900+ by RFDesign
  • GPS L70 is chip, according to specs it has 'balloon mode'. We may need to find out if we have to toggle this somehow.
    Notes: 60k GPS notes: http://showcase.netins.net/web/wallio/GPSrcvrsvs60kft.htm
  • Cord's Re Phone GSM chipset is programmable (per Weston).
    Weston requested Cord research the capabilities of the Duino.
  • Dean suggested we do a Foxhunt to practice recovery techniques.
    Weston suggested cutting 900mhz if the final land-recovery is the main focus and we are only using a single method.
    Cord will focus on GPS functionality in Re Phone.
  • Standalone beacon possibility: http://rcbeacon.com/blog/?product=fox-hunt-beacon-transmitter
    Ben ordered one for help with terminal recovery.
  • Dean asked if we could make the June Mini-Maker Faire date.
    Possibly?
  • Weston described how he reverse-engineered a headset for the Bao Feng handheld to make a connector to the Pi so it can interface with APRS. Excellent.
  • Dean asked about timeline for testing recovery with what we have already, Weston says maybe 2 weeks.
  • Ben suggest: we have a display table at Mini Maker Faire with either results or a display of the hardware.
    Cord: We should mail Nick at Science Factory
  • We'll try a range test in two weeks then possibly perform an ad-hoc recovery test and/or try out having a fixed base while someone drives around with the transmitter setup. Cord will try to get GPS online, if it's not available then we'll just test signal reception w/ canned data.
  • Weston would like us to commit to range test.

Weight notes

RFD 900+ 18g
Handheld Baofeng 127g
Raspberry Pi 157g (w/ cable)
Re Phone 22g
Spot Tracker 179g
4000mah battery 121
Sphere 311g w/ guts
Working total: 935g

-- Main.BenH - 30 Apr 2016