All the links you'll need
Here you'll find links to stories of others who have accomplished similar tasks, links to pages with useful information, and links to relevant suppliers.
A background on weather balloons: http://lowcountryaccompanies.com/info/air-meteorology-weather-balloons - Goes into the history of high altitude balloons, which started out as far back as the late 1800s for weather gathering purposes (can you imagine tracking a balloon with no radio and no GPS????)
Start here: http://www.ukhas.org.uk/. This is the website of the UK High Altitude Society, and they have some great, general resources. A lot of their members also hang out on the freenode IRC server in #highaltitude.
Stories from other projects
http://stilldavid.com/blog/2010/07/high-altitude-weather-balloon-project/
http://alienproject.wordpress.com/
http://www.natrium42.com/halo/flight2/
http://ava.upuaut.net/
Useful links
http://www.hobbyspace.com/NearSpace/index.html - Another site with lots of useful links
http://www.eoss.org/ - A group based in Colorado that does balloon launches all the time. They have a LOT of useful information, including annotation for FAA regulations
FAA Regulation 101 - The FAA regulations on unmanned balloons (note these only apply to your project if it violates anything in section 101.1, or 101,7, but the latter is more vague so it's not a bad idea to follow the regulations in 101.33-39 anyway. Also note that a balloon that bursts at altitude is considered an independent payload cutdown device)
http://showcase.netins.net/web/wallio/GPSrcvrsvs60kft.htm - List of GPS receivers that work above 60k ft
http://timewitharduino.blogspot.com/2009/05/getting-arduino-to-write-to-or-read.html - Interfacing Arduino with your PC (specifically how to get an Arduino sketch to output to a file on your PC)
http://www.aircommandrockets.com/construction_3.htm - How to construct a side-mounted parachute housing
http://arduiniana.org/libraries/tinygps/ - An Arduino library for parsing GPS data. This library gets everything and anything you might need: latitude, longitude, altitude, time, speed, etc.
Suppliers
http://www.apogeerockets.com - Good source of tubes and parachutes and other things amateur rocket related
http://www.sparkfun.com - Source for all things electronic
http://www.amazon.com - A list of suppliers wouldn't be complete without Amazon, I've used them a surprising number of times.
http://www.lemosint.com/radiometrix/ - A supplier of radio equipment in the US. If you're not in the US, check out http://www.radiometrix.com/content/distributors
A background on weather balloons: http://lowcountryaccompanies.com/info/air-meteorology-weather-balloons - Goes into the history of high altitude balloons, which started out as far back as the late 1800s for weather gathering purposes (can you imagine tracking a balloon with no radio and no GPS????)
Start here: http://www.ukhas.org.uk/. This is the website of the UK High Altitude Society, and they have some great, general resources. A lot of their members also hang out on the freenode IRC server in #highaltitude.
Stories from other projects
http://stilldavid.com/blog/2010/07/high-altitude-weather-balloon-project/
http://alienproject.wordpress.com/
http://www.natrium42.com/halo/flight2/
http://ava.upuaut.net/
Useful links
http://www.hobbyspace.com/NearSpace/index.html - Another site with lots of useful links
http://www.eoss.org/ - A group based in Colorado that does balloon launches all the time. They have a LOT of useful information, including annotation for FAA regulations
FAA Regulation 101 - The FAA regulations on unmanned balloons (note these only apply to your project if it violates anything in section 101.1, or 101,7, but the latter is more vague so it's not a bad idea to follow the regulations in 101.33-39 anyway. Also note that a balloon that bursts at altitude is considered an independent payload cutdown device)
http://showcase.netins.net/web/wallio/GPSrcvrsvs60kft.htm - List of GPS receivers that work above 60k ft
http://timewitharduino.blogspot.com/2009/05/getting-arduino-to-write-to-or-read.html - Interfacing Arduino with your PC (specifically how to get an Arduino sketch to output to a file on your PC)
http://www.aircommandrockets.com/construction_3.htm - How to construct a side-mounted parachute housing
http://arduiniana.org/libraries/tinygps/ - An Arduino library for parsing GPS data. This library gets everything and anything you might need: latitude, longitude, altitude, time, speed, etc.
Suppliers
http://www.apogeerockets.com - Good source of tubes and parachutes and other things amateur rocket related
http://www.sparkfun.com - Source for all things electronic
http://www.amazon.com - A list of suppliers wouldn't be complete without Amazon, I've used them a surprising number of times.
http://www.lemosint.com/radiometrix/ - A supplier of radio equipment in the US. If you're not in the US, check out http://www.radiometrix.com/content/distributors
