spliXzog

Student friendly Hands on DIY HAB lesson with simple Arduino coding

High-Level Project Summary

The team spliXzog have come up with a very simple conventional text-based DIY HAB building lesson plan for students from the age group of 10 years and above to easily follow, understand concepts and apply their knowledge practically to evaluate their own understanding and love for space science. The whole lesson plan is structured in such a way that there is almost zero prior knowledge needed to learn about this amazing HAB technology keeping in mind the cost factor to make sure that access to space data is affordable and open for all. This lesson covers the introduction and principle behind the working of HAB till BILL OF MATERIALS and step-by-step instructions for building and launch.

Link to Project "Demo"

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Grgp6qbxYcX5z_OFpr5RqSgxhQSOdtQ9_IdAN3Tc8LE/edit?usp=sharing

Link to Final Project

https://github.com/Reshmaja14/HAB

Detailed Project Description

INTRODUCTION:

The high-altitude balloon has long pushed the boundaries of science. Early scientists initially struggled to produce enough hydrogen to lift their balloons, but after many years it was proven to be a successful flight by using helium gas (He). The idea behind this project is to develop a lesson plan and bill of materials to teach students how to build a low-cost high-altitude balloon that is capable of reaching near-space. The process is very simple.

USES OF HAB:

A high-altitude balloon is an unmanned balloon meant to carry scientific payloads to perform experiments and collect data in near space environments and it has different types of uses listed below:

It is highly used for educational purposes to study and practice various space experiments

It is also used for hobbyists

It can also be used for meteorology, atmospheric, and climate research

It is used for the collection of imagery from near space and in radio applications.

It is used for telecommunication and space communications.

It is very much essential to use for space scientists to test and validate new technologies developed for long-duration space missions and to perform scientific experiments in a near-space environment.

Important Parameter

The important parameters that one should know for launching a HAB include climatic conditions, sensor readings, flight path, etc. Let us have a brief look at the parameters.

Climatic Conditions:

The HAB is a thermal vehicle. It heats up during the day when exposed to the sun. As a zero-pressure balloon heats it, it vents some of the helium through the vent ducts to prevent pressurizing. It flies at a slightly higher altitude during the day. A super-pressure HAB does not vent gas when it heats up. The increased temperature increases the internal pressure.

With no sun or solar input at night, the balloon cools down. As a zero-pressure HAB cools down, it will float at a lower altitude since the helium can lift less mass at a lower temperature. If the HAB vents helium during the day, it will also have less lift. Usually, ballast is dropped to reduce the system mass and to prevent the balloon from floating at too low an altitude at night. When a super-pressure balloon cools down, the internal balloon pressure in the balloon reduces. Super-pressure HAB is designed to have a minimal positive internal balloon at night. If it has a positive internal pressure, it will continue to fly at the same altitude even at night. As the balloon ascends, the pressure of its environment decreases, and the balloon begins to expand.

In two hours, a weather balloon can rise above the clouds, higher than the paths of jet planes, passing through the ozone layer in the stratosphere. Reaching altitudes of 35 km (22 miles) or higher, the balloons endure temperatures as cold as -90° C (-130° F). Depending on the winds, a balloon can drift more than 200 km (125 miles) from the place it was released.

Sensor Reading:

The first and foremost important parameter in this section is GPS which is nothing but Global Positioning System. It helps us to know the location of our HAB through satellite communication. As the HAB pursues its journey we can explore various environmental parameters like atmospheric pressure, temperature, humidity, light intensity, altitude, and so on. And also, we can find the acceleration at which HAB is traveling along with its (X, Y, Z) coordinates.

All these give you an idea about the various parameters that you will be exploring in this NEAR SPACE NEAR YOU mission.

In-depth Explanation

Let us stop all the theory parts as of now and dive into the most excited and awaited hands-on part. Follow the steps to build the DIY HAB.

· Step 1: Integrate the sensors with Arduino UNO.

Follow the instruction given in the GitHub repository. Check the pinout diagram and give the connections. Copy-paste the code given in Arduino IDE. If any libraries are missing download the dependencies. Now RUN the code.

·Step 2: Attach the camera module.

· Step 3: If you want live transmission then connect the LoRaWAN module.

(or)

·Step 3: If you just need to retrieve the data once after landing of HAB use the sd card module. If you want both the live transmission of data as well as if you want to store data you can use both modules.

·Step 4: Rap the Sensors and microcontroller and attach them with the parachute module. Depending upon the payload you have to choose the parachute. A brief description of how to choose the correct parachute module is given in the Working of HAB section. You can refer to it.

·Step 5: Now connect the balloon with the payload and parachute module. A brief description of how to choose the correct balloon is given in the Working of HAB section. You can refer to it.

· Step 6: Choose the correct launching place with the right weather condition.

·Step 7: Setup the launching pad to launch the HAB.

·Step 8: Calibrate the online flight path stimulator and check the ground station working.

·Step 9: Now you are all set to launch the DIY HAB.

As it is said, “prevention is always better than cause”. One has to always stick to the safety regulations while launching HAB. The set of rules are laid by the government of the United States. Those are:

1. Cell Phones are not permitted to track high-altitude weather balloons in flight.

2. Payloads cannot exceed a package weight/size ratio of three ounces per square inch. *

3. No payload package can exceed 6 lb in weight.

4. Entire weight of all payloads cannot exceed 12 lb in total weight (Excludes weight of balloon).

5. No rope or cable should be used which requires more than 50lb of force to separate payload packages from balloons.

6. No one may launch a high-altitude weather balloon which creates a hazard to other people and property. (i.e., Incorrect parachute, faulty rigging, inappropriate launch location)

7. No one may use a high-altitude weather balloon to drop objects (i.e., gliders and projectiles).

* Determined by dividing total package weight by the area in square inches of the smallest surface.

Bill of materials:

Total payload weight = 194.99 gm

Total estimated cost of payload = $62.231

Thus the total cost of this entire project can be less than $110 which at least 60% cheaper than any other existing DIY HAB schemes/guides.

Arduino sensor coding reference:

https://github.com/Reshmaja14/HAB

Flight Path:

To know about the flight path, and to have precise look at the landing area of the HAB, online predictors can be used. Let me introduce a user-friendly one to you. http://predict.habhub.org/

Calculations and tracking:

For ease of calculations, after researching and studying a lot of external websites we recommend the following site as they give calculations that are the most accurate and also because of their secure privacy policy.

https://www.stratoflights.com/en/tutorial/weather-balloon-tools/

Visual reference CAD 3D model:

https://a360.co/3a181z5

Outcomes:

Our flexible curriculums are designed with independent learners in mind. Although flexible options are available, our courses are fully accredited and boast rigorous. Students can take advantage of our program through comprehensive support from the documents live demonstration provided. Through the course, we want to convey that SpaceTech is not as difficult as portrayed. Those are just misconceptions. One can easily learn the nuances of HAB which is considered as an in-Vito satellite.

A student who finishes this course can successfully launch a HAB.
He/she will be aware of the physics behind HAB at the same time.
They will be learning how to integrate different sensors with Arduino.
They will learn the basics of C language coding.
Students can know about the various environmental parameters through a real-time experiment.

Space Agency Data

All the above-stated open data portal data sets were very useful for us as a team to understand the dynamics of a HAB and were a very significant contributor to the working/explanation segment of our lesson plan. Link number 2 played an important role in constructing the re-entry part of our DIY HAB so that most of the electronic components can be retrieved and reused for a lot of continuous launch cycles thus reducing the cost of the subsequent launches making it more cost-effective to reach out to the near-space!!

Hackathon Journey

Space apps experience was amazing for our team and it was a good platform to showcase our innovation in the challenge and we learned many new things related to space and technology. We choose near-space near you because first, we want to go in hardware side where a little bit of coding is there and High-altitude Balloons is a great challenge for young people as it is a hobby and mainly our teammates have a keen interest in space, that made us choose this challenge. First, we learned about high altitude balloons and their uses then we saw how we can develop a lesson plan for this to be able to understand for the students and also to build this one cheap and give it for students in an easy manner. We just split the work among us and we did a google search about our parts and moved on it.

Keep tinkering, Keep Thinking

References

Global Judging

This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.