ROBOTMAK3RS Blog

While Lil’ Joe sports a fairly simple program, Gypsy ended up as one of the more complex programs I’ve written in NXT-G. The program (still named “Nadar”) really needed to handle several different tasks at once. Primarily a photographic platform, it had to be able to operate the camera in both still & video modes, and take interesting pictures while controlling the platform. As a secondary goal, it needed to datalog the numerous environmental sensors hooked up, as well as “engineering data” (like battery voltage, platform angle, motor noise, etc.). On top of this, it needed to monitor and control the payload temperature, critical to keeping the payload alive. And to complicate all of this, the program needed to be as small as possible, leaving as much memory as possible for datalogging. In order to handle the photographic challenge, the program uses the same approach as the original Nadar: following a script . It reads a series of timed commands from a text file (think of it as a “...

There's been some new information posted at the HALE website that I thought might make for a fun heads-up on the mission. First, the payload allocations for the two balloons has been put up. Each balloon will be carrying a ham radio that will transmit GPS information down, as well as a SPOT transmitter that will be doing the same thing. The first balloon will carry: LUXPAK, Brix-Catcher, Peeps-in-Space, a separate student payload (no name), the "Energizer" communications payload Reel-E, & a video camera payload (a.k.a National Instruments) designed to "look up" through the mission to try to get video of the dynamics at cut down (OK... what it looks like to have your balloon pop 100,000' above the ground). The second balloon will lift several more payloads: a SLR camera payload that has flown before, FLL Team 90, the LEGO Mindstorms Teams submission, Gypsy, Lil' Joe, & a "Giant NXT" communications payload. The communication payloads are...

While I'm still working refining the payloads with the folks who will be launching the HALE mission , I thought I'd at least put up a few more facts and pictures about them here in the blog. Of my two payloads, Lil' Joe is perhaps the most ambitious... or riskiest. Looking somewhat like a blue loaf of bread with a tailfin, the goal is to replicate, in a very small (& cheap!) way, the famous leap of Col. Joseph Kittinger from over 100,000'. The NXT will try a much more modest goal: being released from roughly 80,000', it will free-fall for a short period of time (something like 20 seconds to a minute or more - the exact length of time is under discussion) before "reeling out" the tailfin, which then functions (I hope!) as a drogue 'chute to pull the main parachute out of the body. There will be no control from the ground, or even communication, with the payload during this process - either the NXT "does it on it's own", or the Nevada ...

It seems a group of faculty & students have taken an NXT where no NXT has gone before… into space. OK, OK, I know the technical definitions, and they didn’t get quite that far, but it’s an amazing use of off-the-shelf technology none the less. Part of the NevadaSat program at the University of Nevada, Reno, is to launch high-altitude balloons carrying student experiments, including dataloggers & cameras. It seems one of the devices they use in these experiment packages are NXTs to control things like the cameras (off-the-shelf digital cameras) and take data. On Mission NBS-07-06 , the balloon reached roughly 97,000’, and a later mission (also carrying an operating NXT) reached 101,253’. For those of you that are wondering, that’s 19 miles above sea level, about three times as high as a commerical airliner, where temperatures are sub-zero and the equipment is practically operating in a vacuum. They reported that the NXT works great, and is recovered and reused even though some ...