Breakout boards delivered!

Posted by on 22/07/2010 1 comment

Time to break out the soldering iron!

EDIT :

There is a big error in the breakout board. You MUST supply VCC to Pin 1 even if you’re using an active patch antenna :

Progress !

Posted by on 10/07/2010 No comments

Well the break out boards turned up. Sadly they didn’t work or something was wrong, however in a bit of disastrous soldering I managed to destroy the ISM chip.

Anyway I’ve redesigned the break out to be alot more simple. Those are on the way. Also ordered some new ISM300’s. :/

In the mean time  the nice people at Maxim sent me 2 free PARASITE POWER DS18S20 TO-92 L/F Temperature modules. Using the following link I’ve managed to make a pair of DS18B20’s talk to my Arduino.

So my first stab at a telemetry string is as follows :

$$Ava,5620,TIME,24.44,24.56,

a nice cosy 24.5’C in the room 🙂

It’s a very simple Sketch :

#include <OneWire.h>
#include <DallasTemperature.h>
#define ONE_WIRE_BUS 2
OneWire oneWire(ONE_WIRE_BUS);
DallasTemperature sensors(&oneWire);
int counter;
void setup(void)
{
Serial.begin(9600);
sensors.begin();
}
void loop(void)
{
while(true)
{
Serial.print(“$$Ava,”);
Serial.print(counter++);
Serial.print(“,TIME,”);
sensors.requestTemperatures();
Serial.print(sensors.getTempCByIndex(0));
Serial.print(“,”);
Serial.print(sensors.getTempCByIndex(1));
Serial.println(“,”);
delay(2000);
}
}

Its becoming fairly apparent I don’t know much about coding on the AVR. I’ll have to have a chat with someone about it!

Yay for non standard!

Posted by on 19/04/2010 1 comment

The ISM300X chip seems to use a non standard pin spacing meaning you can’t just use an off the shelf SMD proto board.I’ve mailed Inventek to see if they have any premade but looks like I’m going to have to craft one myself. Looks like I need to learn Eagle properly!

Break Out Board design for the ISM300F2-C5-V0004

Posted by on 12/04/2010 No comments

Whilst the chip is on order I decided I would need to make a break out board for prototyping. The chip is a SMD so I will need to mount it to something so I can plug it into a breadboard for testing.

I’ve never used any PCB Design software before and people seemed to be using Eagle to do the design work. So I grabbed the freeware version and a tutorial and had a play. It became quickly apparent I would need a library for the ISM SMD. Following this helpful tutorial at Instructables.com I prepared the following library for the Inventek ISD300 SMD :

http://ava.upuaut.net/files/inventek.lbr

So next step is to make a board for it to go on…

Where to start, Selection of the GPS Module

Posted by on 12/04/2010 No comments

Having done quite alot of background reading round the UKHAS another projects websites I decided I needed to start somewhere. I decided to begin my project with the answer to the question of  “Where the hell is my balloon?” part of the project.

It soon became apparent that most commercial GPS systems shut down over certain altitudes/speeds. Altitudes that are within easy reach of the balloon. Inventek Systems in the US sell a GPS module designed for high altitude work which looked suitable. The ISM300F2-C5.1-V0004 High Altitude build is good for 137795 feet. Its a pretty small SMD device (18mm X 18mm x 3mm) no idea how I’m going to mount it at this time so I’ll get one ordered along with an aerial!

Welcome to Project Ava

Posted by on 12/04/2010 No comments

Hi there and welcome to my High Altitude Balloon project.

Inspired by various projects around the world mainly the Icarus Project and the work of the UKHAS I have finally decided to try start a project of my own. I’m going to try and document the project as I go along using this blog.

Hopefully my fiancées predictions of raining digital cameras won’t come to fruition:)