Yikes, I can't believe it's been more than 2 months since I posted. I didn't want to make another post unless it included some sort of milestone, and a number of things have gotten in the way of that lately. However, with a major design review for senior design and a math exam behind me, this weekend provides a bit of a lull so I've had time to make some progress.

I managed to finally set up the GPS on the cell phone to provide tracking and downlink it via the web. I was so excited when I saw my phone doing this:

It was a lot harder to figure this out than I thought....

Oh, and the cable sticking out to the left is just for power. The process to set up this tracking takes place entirely over the air.

I had my last final Thursday morning, and my train didn't leave until Saturday night, so I had a lot of time to spend working on this project. I got a significant amount of construction done, as you see in the photo on the left, and learned a lot!


Mostly, I learned how easy it is to forget one of the most important lessons of construction: it is infinitely easier to get it right in a CAD model than in real life!

I had a lot of trouble with the top piece you see there, the one that keeps all the motor holders in their correct orientations. I couldn't build the motor holders perfectly straight , so I had to oversize the holes on that top piece, and it doesn't look pretty.


I also saw that the CAD model for how to attach the camera would have been really difficult to implement in reality, so I moved the latches to the side of the body and latched it on there. 

More, after the break:

The last few weeks have been busy with classes and senior design and otherwise stressing out, but with only two finals, I intend to start construction of the main rocket body this week and hopefully get some data from tests of the rocket motor to be able to predict range and altitude.


Electronics
I'm going to try to develop a printed circuit board on which to mount the GPS. My friend Andy, who is in ECET (Electrical and Computer Engineering Technology), says he help me out with it and get a good deal from the PCB manufacturer which makes things a lot easier. I have the sketch on paper, all that remains is translating to a PCB program and ordering the chip


Testing
I've ordered some G-motors, and they should be arriving this week. Once I get them and figure out ignition requirements, I'm going to run a test that will both verify the ignition system, and get data on the rocket motor (i.e. thrust profile)


I'll keep the update short and stop it here. Hopefully I will have more to talk about by the end of the week.

Let this post be an intermediate update on Project HAL progress.

The Thanksgiving break has led to quite a bit of conceptual work on the design of the rocket. I'm working on CAD models, which I did at first for the hell of it, thinking it was probably overkill, but it's really helped me to determine how I'm going to put the flipcam at the base of the rocket, since space there is really tight. I've also come up with an alternative GPS solution that isn't as full featured as what I had before, but gets the job done and does it for hundreds of dollars less. I've also been throwing around ideas for the parachute system, and coming up requirements for it.

The "official" date on the blog may say November 13, but I wrote the following on November 1st. From this you may infer that it took me nearly two weeks to get around to making a website...

So I finally got started on my high altitude balloon launch that I’ve been meaning to get to for months! You can read about it the "About Project HAL" page, but here's another brief synopsis of the project.

I will be using a weather balloon to launch a payload to a very high altitude (around 30km up, which is 18.6 miles for you English unit lovers out there). That payload will contain a camera (maybe 2), GPS receiver chip, microprocessor, and a radio of some sort to transmit the GPS data back to my laptop on the ground. Also, 4 (approximately, that number could go up or down) G-class amateur rocket motors.

More details and progress report after the break