Electronics

This blog post is on the launch of the ANSR (Arizona Near Space Research) near space balloon #55

Rich Osgood from Heatsynclabs.org and I were invited observers. Our objective was to help track the balloon and locate the landing zone while testing our own radio balloon tracking equipment.  I’m working with Heatsynclabs.org in planning a near space balloon flight later this summer and this was great exposure with a group that has now launched 55 near space balloons.  We learned tons about filling the balloon, rigging, radio transmitting, tracking and recovery. Below is some of those details and if you’re interested I pasted the radio details at the very end.

Their flight reached ~92,000 feet before the balloon popped and the payloads parachuted back to Earth. Many schools in the area participated in the launch with a small payload box of their own containing automated cameras and digital data recorders.

Click {more} to see all the photos and radio details.

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A team at Heatsyn Labs is building a near space high altitude balloon payload to take photos and to enter a national contest. I’m not on the team but I was helping test their tracking electronics with my home built vacuum chamber. We used the chamber to test the radio and GPS equipment in near space conditions. Next meeting we will add dry-ice around the chamber to simulate the -70F temps at 100,000 feet. If there is any issues its best if it shows up on the ground and not at 18 miles up.

Heatsync Labs Homepage
Heatsync Labs Nearspace Balloon Project
Flickr photos by John Kit at Heatsyn Labs

I will post update with photos and links after the first test flight.

My friend bought an expensive car starter “jumper box” from Costco when it was on sale, but when he went to use it about 3 months later the battery in the jumper box was dead and wouldn’t charge no matter how long he left the box plugged into a 110v outlet.  He brought the unit to me thinking I could fix it but the battery was shot and was going to cost $75 + shipping to get a drop in replacement 12v sealed lead acid battery for the unit.  He told me to just junk it for parts. 

After thinking about it for a month or so I thought maybe I could modify it to hold a larger 12v lawn mower battery.  I knew it would work just fine if I could find a battery that fit.  I took it apart again to take some internal measurements then headed for Wal-Mart.  Sure enough I found a nice riding lawn mower battery that would fit if I cut out the front-side of the jumper box housing.  The battery even had nice through-hole terminal connectors for bolting on the cables.   This mod ran about $35 for the replacement battery and a 2 foot threaded rod with some lock nuts to hold the battery in the unit.

What follows are some bad (sorry) videos of the modification and some photos.  Its possible any dead jumper box could be brought back to life this way because I would think most take the same size internal 12v sealed lead acid battery and its not a lot of work.

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