We arrived Friday at the Serra da Estrela chalets and started to unpack and prepare the Spacebits payload. In the past, we had done five flights, and recovered all of them, but we never had a perfect flight. Between software bugs (sorry!!!), cameras that stopped working and many other small problems, we collected a list of DOs & DON‘Ts. With two days there was enough time to solve them and to improve the design. We worked hard to cover and improve every failure scenario that we thought but it seems it is not enough … Oh, boy, you can’t get paranoid enough!!!

With so much effort and value put in the project, we had designed Spacebits keeping in mind that if anything happens to the main board we would be releasing a few thousand euros into the wild. So worked has started to design a failsafe module. It has been proven invaluable and again, Fernado Afonso and Filipe Varela started to check the module and test it thoroughly.

Taking pictures of the earth was the major goal, but we wanted also to track the flight on real-time. Celso Martinho, our fearless leader, developed a web application based on SAPO Maps that could show the position and also some sensor information on the web. We had test it already with success but we also add a few tweaks.

There was also applets for the iPhone and iPad developed by Filipe Varela. This is handy but you need to have 3G coverage, which is not always the case. Nevertheless, it is an invaluable add-on.

There where also some work to do on the main board, where data is collected, recorded and sent to our base station. The external temperature sensor had to be repacked and all sensors were carefully tested. With the rest of the team happy to work inside, Filipe Valpereiro headed into the sun, testing the sensors and checking the GPS signal. After a few minutes in the sun his monitor reported a 48º measured with the external sensor. It was really hot …

Celso invited everyone to join in our mailing list to improve the project. There where some requests in the mailing list for an Android version and Miguel Duarte coded one just in time for Spacebits #6.

It was also a great opportunity to improve our ground station and Delfim Machado worked on a app to receive data from the HAB and stream it to our server. In the past we had a laptop with a 3G connection to stream data into the web. But there was not always 3G signal while driving into the country.

This time we had the perfect solution. Serra da Estrela is the highest place in Portugal and we could just leave an antenna there, pointing into the direction where we expected the ballon to fall. In a few hours, Delfim and Celso managed to connect a XBee radio to an Android Sapo A5. All pieces fitted perfectly in the plastic enclosure that Celso bought the day before. Late at night everything was ready, just in time to another TO-DO item: get some good sleep. We learned that the hard way!!!

Sunday started shinny and there was another TO-DO item: ask the caffe manager to allow us to place our secret ground station and YAGI antenna in the terrace. We had line of sight from the terrace into the spot where the ballon was predicted to fall, near Castro Daire. We turned the main board and immediately everyone received some SMS with the ballon coordinates.

Filipe Valpereiro configured the radios to work in broadcast and Delfim Machado assembled another Android Sapo A5 ground station to go in the car. Just in case someone might try to mess with our YAGI antenna and left us in the dark for the next few hours … At this moment the expectations where why, and we started to gather around the cars to unpack the material and prepare the balllon.

We had rented  a 7 person van, filled with hand bags, computers, some food and 9000L of compressed Helium. Not the kind of luggage that you want to carry around in a car. Living dangerously

Celso instructed all the attendees to took some care before handling the ballon. There was a lot of wind that day, as expected and we need a lot of hands to help us secure the 3 meters wide ballon until it’s full. It’s not easy to handle in mild winds, and everyone took extra precautions not to wear any sharp object, wedding rings included!!!

After some ground work we started to pump Helium into the ballon, very slowly. It takes about an hour to fill the ballon. If you go to fast, there’s a chance to release it at cold temperatures and the latex rubber can froze. There was some wind, but we got plenty of time, and patience, more or less

Don’t panic

We have enough hands to help.

Meanwhile, Fernando and Filipe inspected the payload and added the Reward-if-Found sign. As silly as it sounds, it helped us to recover our payload in the second flight, found in a beach near Cádiz, one week after a our failure. Name, phone, email and skype should be enough

It was time to turn on the GoPro camera. Very light, easy to operate, water prof enclosure available, and can shot 1080p.  This is a must piece, i only wish they could have a model with swappable lens!!! We had no time to fully dehydrate the camera and the enclosure. This turned to be a problem latter on. During the flight, the camera crosses colder layers of the atmosphere and the lens get some internal condensation. Not critical, but some of footage got blurred.

With the ballon filled, it was time to measure the lift force. Fernando crafted a weight mechanism with a dynamometer attached to a wood board and some solid concrete weights. With the ballon secured to a nylon rope it was easy to measure the lift force.

It’s a simple and elegant solution, release the attached ballon and with a simple dynamometer you can measure the lift force. We got a few measurements but we pumped a few more liters of Helium, to account for the wind force. Better safe then sorry

Countdown: 3, 2, 1 … GO

In a few seconds the ballon reached hundreds of meters above our head. The hunt had begin, we packed everything, and rushed to the car, to get some data from our Android based ground station.

Unfortunately we had no data. No radio signal, no GPS, nothing. The ballon climbed silently, and we pointed the antenna hopping to get some data, but it was hopeless.

We suspected that the main board switch had been turned off, maybe by a near cable when closing the box. In the rush, no one remembered to test the radio communication. A simple procedure, that could save us from failure. The flight predictor pointed Castro Daire as the most probable landing spot, and the team moved on.

At this moment we hoped to get the ballon landing in a GSM covered area. The failsafe module is programmed to send SMS with the last know coordinates. It helped us to recover some of the balloons, and we hopped the module would work again, but things weren’t prospective, the payload could land in an area with no GSM coverage.

After a few hours driving and burning the car tiers, we went to Castro Daire. Our flight simulations showed this to be the most likely spot. We stopped for some quick snack and a brief meeting waiting for some message from the failsafe module. Lunch was abruptly interrupted when our phones started to ring, Spacebits #6 had landed.

In less then one hour we recovered the ballon. We discovered latter that hour that the Google Maps API rounded the position to the nearest route. While useful driving a car, it’s not something you wanted to happen in the wild, and this sort of “bug” lefts us wandering around, looking for the ballon. Luckily, Rafael and his wife had a Garmin GPS, and they were able to locate it easily.

After opening the box we found the problem. There was a Killer-Switch and one of the cable add turned it off. So much for failure scenarios and hard work. Shortly after being turned on, the radio started to transmit, and our ground station at Serra da Estrela (80Km distance) started to receive some data. In a few seconds we where able to see data in the Spacebits website.

Time for a group photo and prepare to return home.

Based on the ascent velocity and the amount of video recorded we estimate that the ballon reached 38Km high. At this high, you can start to see the round shape of the Earth, which appears more dramatic with the GoPro fish eye lens.

You can also see part of the parachute in the left corner, moments before opening. It takes approximately 30 minutes for the payload to return into the Earth.

It was a great weekend, full of surprises, work and fun. Above all, it is a great way to share knowledge, experience real life problems and meet new people. Thank’s to everyone who show up in Serra da Estrela.

And if you want to see more, please enjoy the video bellow.

The Fritzing project has released a new version with tons of improvements. Fritzing is a great tool to create electronic diagrams and turn them into a prototype. The new version comes with support for SMD parts to make your PCB design much smaller.

It also comes bundled with a SparkFun parts library (74 cool sensors and breakout boards!!!) and even has support for Stripboards. Not everyone works with breadboards, so by popular demand they added stripboards and perfboards. You can even cut and uncut strips! No more hours doing tedious hand routing, and bug hunting.

If you’ve never used Fritzing before, check out the video bellow for a quick introduction, then download it and start playing around! Enjoy!

Bildr is a self-described “community of makers, artists, designers, and builders focused on simplifying the world of electronics DIY by modularizing information. Instead of showcasing users’ projects, we offer bite-size, easy-to-follow articles that help you hit the ground running.”

They produce a series of tutorials on Arduino, sensors and a lot more. Bildr is a fantastic community that grew up from a simple idea: to enable people to stop searching for help, and start getting their idea made. They hope that by create building blocks of working code and wiring examples for almost anything you would want to make, you will focus on building your idea, instead of loosing valuable time.

All the tutorials come with nice illustrations, working code, and wiring examples, check the image above for an example of using an Xbee radio with an Arduino. The work they have come up with is outstanding! Check out this tutorials on the Series 1 XBee or the ADXL335 Accelerometer. There are more tutorials going up almost every day so keep an eye on the Bildr site for more to come.

The Nokia 5110 LCD screen has 84×48 pixels and is a suited for lots of applications. This one is mounted on an easy to solder PCB.  It uses the PCD8544 controller. The PCD8544 is a low power CMOS LCD controller and driver, designed to drive a graphic display of 48 rows and 84 columns. It uses the same driver as the Nokia 3310 LCD and it is easy to communicate with the Arduino, using the PCD8544 library.

This 16-character, 2-line parallel liquid crystal display achieves a large viewing area in a compact package. It uses the common HD44780 interface. You can find sample HD44780 LCD interface code written for a variety of AVR microcontrollers as part of the Pololu AVR library. If your prefer to use this LCD with the Arduino check out the LCD libraries and examples contributed to the Arduino Playground.

The Full Rotation Servo, a simple, high quality continuous full-rotation servo motor. A standard 3-pin power and control cable is attached and all hardware shown is included. Works with any DC power supply between 4.8-6.0V and at top operating speed of 60-70RPM (4.8-6.0V respectively) and a torque of 3.3-4.8 kg/cm (4.8-6.0V respectively).

The HD-1160A is a great general-purpose miniature analog servo from Power HD. Servo horns and associated hardware are included. The HD-1160A a great general-purpose actuator for small mechanisms that require a bit more torque than you can get out of micro and sub-micro servos.

The Arduino-compatible IMU is a project by Chris Anderson and Jordi Muñoz to create an AHRS (attitude heading reference system) for UAV control and general motion capture. This is the main board for the ArduIMU 6DOF. By itself, this board works as a 4DOF — it produces three axes of acceleration and one axis of angular velocity data.

This board can be connected to up to two Ardu 6DOF daughter boards which will each add one more axis of angular velocity information. The ArduIMU 6DOF main board comes equipped with one LISY300AL, a single axis ±300°/s gyro, and one ADXL335, a three axis ±3g accelerometer. All filtering components are included. There are no on-board regulators so power provided should be clean and regulated 3.3V.

This is a breakout board for the Blackberry Trackball. The four spindles on the trackball have a tiny circular magnet the end; each of these are paired with an SMD hall effect sensor, which are used to measure up, down, left and right movements of the trackball. An SMD momentary switch is placed under the trackball to give you a select switch. Also included on the Trackballer are 4 LEDs: red, blue, green and white. These can be powered to light the clear trackball up any color you can imagine.

This is a simple breakout board for the BMP085, a high-precision, low-power barometric pressure sensor. The BMP085 offers a measuring range of 300 to 1100 hPa with an absolute accuracy of down to 0.03 hPa. It’s based on piezo-resistive technology for EMC robustness, high accuracy and linearity as well as long term stability. This sensor supports a voltage supply between 1.8 and 3.6VDC and can be connected directly to a micro-controller via the I²C bus.

The SCP1000-D01 is a great IC – now you can play with it! The SCP1000 uses an SPI interface and is the very first absolute pressure sensor on the market to use MEMS technology to grant 17-bit resolution. Under ideal conditions, this sensor can detect the pressure difference within a 9cm column of air.

This is a small parts box that is great for securely holding small electronic components in individual compartments. You don’t want resistors and capacitors hanging out together – bad things happen.

Also don’t forget to check out the Pololu Component Box with Dividers. The box has two secure latches and rounded bottoms for easy retrieval of small parts. It also come with nine compartment dividers that can de adjusted to fit your needs.

This jumper wire set contains 25 each of the standard jumper wires that are up to 1 inch long. This jumper wire refill kit is great for replacing the commonly-used and easily-lost shorter wires. The wires are compatible with any standard breadboard with a 0.1-inch grid.

This adapter allows you to connect a barrel jack connector to bare wires. One end has screw terminals and the other has a 5.5×2.1mm, center-positive male barrel jack. If you need to connect bare wires to a barrel jack on an Arduino or a development board, this might be the simple solution.

The MQ-6 is a simple-to-use liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) sensor, suitable for sensing  LPG (composed of mostly propane and butane) concentrations in the air. We also stock the MQ-4 that can detect compressed natural gas (CNG) sensor, suitable for sensing  natural gas (composed of mostly Methane [CH4]) concentrations in the air.

Use this simple IR receiver for infrared remote control of your next project. It mates well with embedded electronics and can be used with common IR remotes. Check out this Arduino Example Source Code.

Para os mais audazes, vai haver uma workshop de Circuit Bending onde podem dar nova vida a instrumentos musicais electrónicos e uma workshop de Toy Hacking onde serão modificados brinquedos utilizando o Arduino. As workshops vão ter lugar no espaço 4it Chiado, junto ao Largo de Camões.

OpenFrameworks
23 a 26 de Novembro, Rui Madeira

Introdução ao Arduino
27 e 28 de Novembro, Filipe Valpereiro

Circuit Bending
29 e 30 de Novembro, Diogo Melo

Wireless Arduino
4 e 5 de Dezembro, Filipe Valpereiro

Visuais Reactivos com Processing
7 a 10 de Dezembro, Rui Madeira

Toy Hacking
11 e 12 de Dezembro, Filipe Valpereiro

Mais Informações e Inscrições:
Elemento Indesejado
elemento.indesejado@gmail.com
(+351) 966 137 780

Launching an autonomous unit is extremely challenging, you need to think on every possible scenario. As it turned out, this was a day to remember.  We recover the payload box, the two Cannon cameras and the pictures. But the price was high, nevertheless. A lot of mistakes and a lot of lessons to be learned and live with!!!

Check the video or jump straith into the Spacebits Flight2 story!!!

/// PORTUGUÊS

O festival Codebits organizado pela SAPO é um evento que pretende juntar pessoas de áreas creativas e tecnologias inovadoras num ambiente informal e relaxado em Lisboa. Durante os 3 dias, haverá espaço para talks, workshops, concursos de programação, hacking muita animação e espaço para acampamento, descanso e alimentação.

Em 2009 participei no Codebits e recomendo vivamente a experiência. Foi uma experiência surpreendente, e no meio de uma conversa informal juntei-me ao projecto Spacebits. Se ainda não o conhecem, aproveitem para ver as mais belas fotos de Portugal visto do Espaço

O registo no evento é gratuito e a lista de temas a apresentar ainda está aberta a novas propostas.

/// ENGLISH

Codebits is an amazing event bringing creative people and technology all together in a relaxed and friendly environment in Lisbon, Portugal.

In short: “3 days. 24 hours a day. Talks. Workshops. Lots of food and beverages. 24 hour programming/hacking competition. Quizz Show. Rock Band Contest. Lots of gaming consoles. More food. More beverages. More coding. Sleeping areas. More fun. An unforgettable experience.”

Registration is free and if you want, you can propose a talk / workshop.

Codebits 2009 was an amazing event bringing creative people and technology all together in a relaxed and friendly environment. In short, it was “3 days. 24 hours a day. 600 attendees. Talks. Workshops. Lots of food and beverages. 24 hour programming/hacking competition. Quizz Show. Rock Band Contest. Lots of gaming consoles. More food. More beverages. More coding. Sleeping areas. More fun. An unforgettable experience.”

I was invited to give a presentation on Physical Computing. Part of my work at Inmotion is to promote open hardware and to assist users helping them to be creative trough technology. I tough it was about time to present the work done in Portugal and gathered most of it in a two-hour presentation. Unfortunalty i didn’t sleep the night before and my voice dragged a little bit.

But Codebits was much more then Physical Computing There were sessions on Mobile Development with Android, Web 2.0, Loockpicking, Game Design, Creative Robotics, Multitouch Applications just to name a few topics. Check the photos in Flickr or Sapo Fotos.

I sure wish to be there in 2010!!!

Filipe Valpereiro

Untitled* is the work of Joana Fernandes Gomes, developed at the Music Tecnology Group (Universitat Pompeu Fabra) and at CITAR (Universidade Católica Portuguesa). Based on a Tangible User Interface, this work is a geometric generative system that is controlled by the movement on the surface. Each object displays different functionality. Some produce forms and other act like tools to shape a form. 

There are three kind of tools: barrier, magnet and eraser. Using movement a user can interact with generative visuals. Check the Photos & Video. Try it this weekend 30 of May at Fundação de Serralves