2009/09/15

High altitude pictures...

I found this page really inspiring...

http://space.1337arts.com/

Some MIT guys took off-the-shelf components to launch a camera ~20 miles into the atmosphere and take pictures.  They used a weather balloon carrying a styrofoam cooler.  In the cooler was a cheap digital camera rigged to take pictures every couple seconds. 

In order to find the thing when it came down, they also used a Boost Mobile pre-paid phone which comes pre-loaded with GPS tracking software.  So the phone receives the GPS position signal, and then uploads it's position to a webpage.  Go to the webpage and track your phone!

To throw a cooler 20 miles up in the air and have it come down who-knows-where, and then find it again is no small feat.  To do it with store-bought components for $150 is incredible.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I really like the idea of just trying stuff. Getting a bunch of stuff together and doing it.