In recent months I’ve been busy on a project I’m doing with some friends: launch a weather balloon into the stratosphere (over 38km of altutudine).
Although is not a new project in the world, and even in Italy (see the project Stratospera), we believe there is new compared to other similar projects.
First of all, the project is entirely open source, both for hardware than for the software: each aspect it will come out, will be published on the official website.
In secondo luogo, il “computer di bordo”, è realizzato interamente con Arduino, che si occuperà quindi della gestione della posizione, dei dati meteorologici, del datalogging, di una parte di comunicazione, e della gestione del “cut-off” di emergenza. Android si occuperà prevalentemente invece della gestione della posizione e dell’invio tramite rete cellulare dei dati in tempo reale (ovviamente quando sarà sotto copertura di rete, cioè realisticamente fino a 5-6km di altitudine).
As the tird innovation, there is in preparation, not from the first launch of course, the possibility of recovering the payload (containing all the electronic equipment), via a glider drone, which should autonomously bring everything to the point of launch…
From the point of view of the feasibility study we have finished, while now we are focusing on the Arduino software, and we are proceeding with the request of various authorizations, as well as to raise funds for various expenses …
If you want more information, you can go to our site:
http://actarusproject.wordpress.com/
Italian one:
https://actarusprojectitalia.wordpress.com/
This site is instead to raise funds on IndieGogo:
http://igg.me/at/actarus
We are also looking for people willing to contribute to the project, not only economically but also humanly to the project.
In addition, if some company wants to sponsor us with material that can be used in the project, we will be happy.
I will keep you updated!
Electronics & Arduino 