Hi everyone! I'm a university student who's part of a research team that flies weather balloons to make atmospherics measurements. I was originally going to be working on the antenna part of our flight operations, but due to corona, in person work is now limited.
The professor who runs this research team now wants me to learn programming and more about micro controllers. My programming knowledge is limited (mostly software programming that I learned on my own when I was younger, because I wanted program video games), and while our team doesn't typically use Arduino boards, he figured it would be less intimidating if I learned some of this stuff on an Arduino board instead. That being said, he doesn't know much about Arduino stuff himself and told me to research a board with the following specs to learn and practice on, and one we could also make use of. I'm looking for something small enough to attach to a drone or a balloon payload.
Specs
GPS capabilities (High altitude if possible)
MicroSD (to save the GPS information)
Battery
It would also be nice if the board was non-soldering if possible
I'm very new to this stuff, so I'm not really sure where to start. He told me to look up Arduino (Plus, Nano, Uno, Leonardo) I think those are board models? I'm hoping that'll be able to get some more specific information from you guys. However, as of right now, I'm just googling around!
You need first need to decide on which Arduino, and that could depend on the weight and possibly size of board the balloon can carry, you or we cannot guess that, you need to find out.
Once the people running the project have told you how much weight you can have, lookup the specs on the boards you quoted. A Google search on 'Arduino UNO' for instance will point you at reference information for that board.
Cannot see how it could be made non-soldering, something like a breadboard approch (which would be non-soldering) would be way to un-reliable, a daft idea really.
Try and find something small that has the SD built in and a battery connection would be nice too. Weight is likely to be a concern and that'll also minimize soldering. Here's an example Adafruit Feather STM32F405 Express. Not they have any in stock, and the design is a bit new, but something of that ilk with built in LiPo charging would be nice.
Think about temperature. I've a feeling that balloon projects have to worry about the electronics and battery especially, getting so cold they won't function. Condensation in their enclosure is a worry too so you may need a bit of heating which will impact your battery requirements and oops, weight
Do you need a clock? You can record the elapsed time using millis, but knowing the actual time might be nice.
I don't know of any way you can avoid having to solder the GPS connections, but on the other hand, my module did come with a plug in connector, so maybe there is an Arduino like thing that has its mate already attached.
How high is the balloon going? GPS has statutory altitude limits.
wildbill:
Think about temperature. I've a feeling that balloon projects have to worry about the electronics and battery especially, getting so cold they won't function. Condensation in their enclosure is a worry too so you may need a bit of heating which will impact your battery requirements and oops, weight
How high is the balloon going? GPS has statutory altitude limits.
The batteries to use are AA Lithium Energizers, good down to -40C.
Moisture is an issue, heating wastes a lot of power and weight, conformal coating on the electronics is a good idea.
Most GPS will fail when configured as standard at altitudes more then 12km. The Ublox and Quectel GPSs can be put into high altitude mode and are good for 50km altitude. The current record for an amatuer high altitude balloon (XABEN-100) is 45km.
