Prock-1 prelim working schematic

Here is the mostly working schematic for my balloon flight system. I am still working out how I want to preform the radio telemetry. Not all components have been labeled properly yet. I also still need to add the flashing exterior lights and a buzzer. But this is enough to get me going. As I said in one of my earlier posts, this project is going to take a while to get off the ground (pun intended) so I'm in no big hurry.


If you have any comments on how to improve the design below please let me know. I am not a professional circuit designer and only have half of a college degree in electrical engineering. Here is the source of the schematic. I used ExpressPCB's schematic software that you can get here.

Update 4-2008

The Ham radio book arrived last week and I have been reading it here and there. Seems pretty easy to follow. I'm still in the first few chapters and just now getting to what a frequency is. I can't wait to get through it all.I also ordered the Basic Stamp 2px microcontroller last week. It arrived on Tuesday. I have been to busy with work and the family to get to start playing with it. But luckily it is now the weekend. I will post later in the week on how it is going on the programming. More to follow.

Prock-1 Brains First Draft

Progress update

Just bought the HAM radio Level 1 Technician study book from Amazon. Should be here next week or so. I will update then.

In the beginning...

Well I finally found a purpose for my dabbling in electronics and microprocessors. It is call amature high altitude ballooning (HAB). I'll explain more about HAB in a moment.

Years ago I would build little bots that followed lines on the floor and things like that. I didn't really ever have any direction in what to make the bots do. Then the bot building got put on hold due to many reasons. Now finally I am starting to have a little more time to think about having a hobby.

So what is this HAB? First of all it goes by a few different names. HAB is short and to the point. Amature HAB is basically sending a payload up to around 100,000 ft using a sounding balloon and then recovering the payload back on the ground. Sounds easy enough. Well not really. That is what makes it fun, well at least to me. This might be the reason why I still have 4 hours of the Mars rover "Spirit" decesnt to the surface of Mars stored on my DVR. It was amazing to listen to all the preprogrammed systems working perfectly together. There were all kinds of sensors and systems that worked on a landing "script." If one part of the sequence went wrong then it would crash.

Well the same can happen with the balloon and payload. The payload is a set of electronics that operate many things including sensors, real-time telemetry, cameras, radios, etc. Payloads can be anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars each.

Since I am still recovering from an expensive Christmas and an upcoming vacation, I am not expecting to get a balloon and payload launched until early 2009. I want to take my time an learn as much as I can about all the dynamics of this hobby. I would rather figure out how and why things work rather than just read it off a balloon club website as fact. That is not to say all the info in the various sites are worthless, many have been very helpful in giving me an understanding it was it takes to undertake this hobby. I just want to do it my own at first and then maybe later I will look into a club.

To start off my hobby I must collecting tools and resources to build my balloon. The first thing I am going to acquire is my HAM radio license. It is fairly easy to get one now that the FCC has done away with morris code on the test.

After the HAM license I will start to put together the design of the payload and number crunching to figure out what all I can get in the payload and stay under the 6lb FAA limit.

That's all for now.

Jason

Just starting. Will post some stuff soon. For now check out my personal blog at blog.procknation.com

Jason.