Several CU Spaceflight members attended the first annual UKHAS conference in Islington, London this weekend.
Jon and Adam gave a talk introducing the society and the new Wombat radios and flight computers which are currently in development.
This was followed by Ed’s talk on the Squirrel smartphone flight computer project.
After four months in a tree in Exning, the Nova 19 payloads (Squirrel and Weasel) have been recovered thanks to the help of some local tree surgeons.
The Weasel payload with its Canon A560 camera took some stunning photographs.
The view from Nova 19, miles above the clouds.
See all of the Nova 19 images on Flickr.
The Squirrel Nexus One smartphone was also extremely successful, taking some excellent images and videos.
A shot from the Android Nexus One smartphone from project Squirrel
One of the current projects is to build a radio module to be a replacement for the excellent, but large and expensive, Radiometrix NTX2.
A first prototype uses the Micrel MICRF112 10mW FSK transmitter with a varactor controlled crystal pulling arrangement. An onboard variable capacitor also allows tuning of the centre frequency to anywhere in the LPD433 ISM band.
This prototype was soldered up today and is working well. We hope to develop this technique further to produce a cheap & reliable radio capable of MFSK and DominoEX as well as the standard 50/300 baud RTTY.
MICRF112 Prototype under test
Nova 19, the 19th official Cambridge University Spaceflight payload was launched today from Churchill College.
Filling was impeded due to very high winds and heavy rain showers, but eventually the payload carrying the Squirrel Nexus One smartphone and the Arduino tracker was in the air.
Nova 19 Filling
After beating the UK altitude record for high altitude balloons at 36206m, Nova 19 landed in a tree in Exning. We were unable to retrieve it, but stay tuned for the photos and videos when we get it back!
Nova 19 Tie Off
Nova 19's landing site
Today saw the launch of Nova 18, carrying the Squirrel smartphone and the Ferret Arduino tracker. Ferret has had some bugfixes since its last flight and seemed to perform much better this time.
The Nova 18 Payloads
The Squirrel smartphone was running a custom app called SquirrelPhoto enabling it to take pictures at set intervals. Unfortunately the software crashed at about 14km, but some excellent images were recorded up until that point.
Nova 18 from 14km by the Squirrel smartphone
Some work is planned for the Squirrel software and another flight can be expected soon, perhaps with video!