SPOT + EE = SPOTEE: SPOT Hardware Development

Last night Lachlan and I stayed until midnight at the lab working on different things, with Georges who also stayed until 9:30pm (Lachlan is an Australian intern who works with me at the lab and Georges is a Labs visitor from the Netherlands).

What got done:

• The radar reflector is built
• We have a PowerPole to Cigarette Lighter cable for the APRS radio in the car
• We have a mag-mount 5/8 wavelength antenna for the chase car
• The payload bay was designed and a lot of parts of it have been cut out of styrofoam (about 80% of the parts)
  
• The
  MicroTrak radio was tested with the APRS radio and we transmitted my
  callsign (VA2TCV) and the name of the balloon (EDGAR1). It worked.
  However there is some problem in that the GPS coordinates seem to not
  be decoded from the GPS. Maybe due to a bad connection.
• Wires were soldered to the camera so that it could be operated from a spot

We have two short clips:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JB-J96wQfqE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbGD5YkI0GE


Pictures are here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/25109749@N03/

BTW, the new official name of the balloon is EDGAR-1.

This weekend, some of the guys will be working on code and on finishing-up the payload. The sky will be ours !