I'm trying to start a project with my schools DT dept. to send up a weather balloon with Arduino attached, and have temperature data sent back to a ground station - laptop or similar. I've seen the HamSheild option but this seems overengineered for what I'm trying to do.
Having not used Arduino before I'm not sure where to start, but identifying a transmitter module (which presumably transmits in the VHF or UHF range) seemed the way to go. TIA for any suggestions.
LoRa radio modules and Arduino are quite popular for high altitude balloon flights. The current record for transmission range is about 800 km.
A quick search of the web will turn up many project descriptions.
Many thanks for such a fast and useful reply. I've searched for LoRa modules but cannot seem to find any that go beyond 5km. Assuming the weather balloon maxes out around 20miles high, this is going to be too shorter range. Does it largely come down to transimission power and the length of the antenna? 800km seems unbelievable!
Hello bear77
Take a view here to get some ideas:
Have a nice day and enjoy coding in C++.
Дайте миру шанс!
Thanks @paulpaulson - useful stuff. I've done a bit more searching and now I'm starting to fine tune what I really want this project to do. If it could send temperature data back to a base station that would be ideal, but I'd also like to GPS track it using https://aprs.fi I'm completely new to Arduino so this may be quite a challenge!
Hello bear77
Meet some Hams from your local radio amateur group and ask for ballon projects. This will help too.
Have a nice day and enjoy coding in C++.
Дайте миру шанс!
P.S.
The main limitation is probably "line of sight". While it may not be visible without a rather large telescope, something (high) in the air will generally be "line of sight" for 20 miles or so.
The range for LoRa is tricky to define. I've seen 5km, 20km and 700km. The takeaway is indeed that line of sight is crucial, if there's anything between transmitter and receiver ( a hill, trees, buildings) the range takes a hit. High altitude balloons are a best case and generally that's where record breaking distances are reported.
I'd suggest that you do some experiments with a tethered balloon and see whether it meets your needs.
In addition, antenna quality (gain) and modulation method (in this case, large bandwidth) are also extremely important.
Since people are largely limited to living on the ground, most range measurements you encounter will be ground based, and not particularly relevant to balloon flights.
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