Solar Eclipse Ballooning with a Multiband Tracking Subsystem for Undergraduate Research Experience

Abstract

Prior to joining Gannon, he had been involved in various research and development projects in industry and academia for more than 15 years.

Implementation of Simultaneous Multi-Streaming of Live Solar Eclipse Video via 5.8 GHz AirMax

“…OR the 2017 solar eclipse ballooning, the live streaming of the videos capturing the shadows of the solar eclipse was one of the main objectives. All teams who participated in the 2017 solar eclipse ballooning project were initially provided with a baseline ballooning system [1][2] that consisted of a ground station and four standard payloads for still image, video, Iridium-based tracking, and cut-down. In particular, the standard video payload for live streaming was primarily composed of a Raspberry Pi 2 Model B board with a Pi-camera module to capture highdefinition video during balloon flight and a 5.8 GHz Ubiquiti Rocket M5 modem to transmit the video to its counterpart M5 modem on the ground station.…”

Assessment of Student Learning Experience in Two Exemplary Engineering Projects

“…Position and tracking are accomplished using an Iridium satellite modem and GPS position reporting server operated by the national project office. The additional payload for the multiband tracking system (MTS) integrates an RF modem, amateur radio's automatic packet reporting system (APRS) transmitter, and a cell phone in the payload and their receiving components in the MTS mobile station (for more details, refer to [4]). For the project activities, since the baseline system was provided to all participating teams, the main, but not insignificant, challenge is learning to configure and operate it efficiently and successfully to capture images and streaming video of the solar eclipse on August 21, 2017.…”

“…In order to properly configure and operate the baseline balloon system, key learning took place on the following aspects [4]:  Configuring the Raspberry Pi: as all engineering team members are on the electrical engineering track as opposed to computer engineering track, configuring the Raspberry Pi via a remote SSH login to the Linux environment required a significant amount of learning which included learning basic commands and recognizing major differences between Windows-based and Linux-based operating systems, as well as learning basics of computer networking to properly configure the GUI (e.g., communication ports) on the laptop for the modems on the ground station.  Reading and learning from the datasheets and manuals about the modems used, i.e., RFD900+ at 900 MHz, M5 at 5.8 GHz and Iridium, as none of the team members had basic knowledge in communications from their coursework yet.…”