A while ago, the nice folks at Bronkhorst gave us a helium-compatible gas flow meter on loan. This shiny (literally) bit of kit allows us to deliver precise quantities of helium to our high altitude balloons, hopefully increasing the accuracy of our predictions. The flow meter needs control from a PC (with an RS232 port!), which is inconvenient when in the middle of a field.
Skunk is a project to use an Arduino as the controller for the flow meter, meaning we can put it all in a nice case with a battery and control panel for field-filling. A key part of this is the interface PCB – an Arduino shield with all the random circuitry crammed on. After a few weeks of design, the wonderful, amazing, people at the Cambridge Circuit Company fabricated a beautiful PCB for us – pictures of the bare and made-up boards are below! (Points for spotting the design mistakes I’ve had to correct – thankfully none were show-stoppers). There’s still a lot left to do on Skunk, but for once it’s making solid progress. One of our new members will be developing the firmware in the new year, once the hardware is all hooked up.
