[Space] Meeting Notes 2010.04.06

Wed Apr 7 08:33:36 UTC 2010

I REALLY think we should skip the USB and as much of our effort as possible
should be put into getting wifi working.  I think Chris stayed home from the
meeting to work on this, so it's not being forgotten.  It won't take much
effort to get this built and working, considering he has a device that
pretty much does that already.

Has anyone tried to make a USB connection work through what you're talking
about?  The thought of running USB that far gives me protocol nightmares.
 It wasn't meant to run that far and you're going to run into frustrating
glitchy behavior because of spurious and unpredictable timeouts.  The weight
of the cables will not be inconsiderable and the connectors won't stay well
connected.  In order to get it up to the height we were talking about, you'd
need to have 3 hubs - 4 segments.

The alternative would be to mount the payload lower, but with only 1 hub,
you're going to only get about 30 feet (the protocol limitation you mention
is 16.4'), and you just won't get the cool video coverage of being at
height.

I have the package tracker at work.  I put it in my bag when we pulled it
out of the payload.

I'm more than a little concerned about battery life over the course of the
event.  We ordinarily plan for 5 hour flights.  This thing is going to be
going for 2 days, >12 hours continuously on Saturday.  Do we have spare
batteries for everything, or is there some scheme we can come up with to get
them and install them if necessary?

I foresee Friday night, us wanting to pull the payload down and get
everything on chargers so we have full life for Saturday, at the very least.
 I think I still have a spare G1 battery and we could swap the battery for
the second radio (it is NOT a walkie talkie. Ahem.)  for the one we have on
the payload mid-day.  I'm curious about the camera batteries, though.

I know Chris was talking about getting a single board computer with built in
wifi working.  We should probably just toss in a router to our kit so we can
communicate to it.  We should keep in mind we might need on-site
reconfiguration capabilities so we can work with any wifi they may be
providing.

Meredith, do you know if they will be providing wireless that we will be
expected to use, or do we need to bring our own?  I think it'd be a lot
better if given the choice, we use our own.  It's much easier to configure
and test that way.  Also the distance is short enough that I'm not overly
concerned with getting a good signal if we're able to be more or less
directly beneath it, although I think Chris and I should test whatever setup
we come up with just in case.

Christie
_______
"We also briefly discussed having officers replaced by very small shell
scripts." -- Noisebridge meeting notes 2008-06-17

The outer bounds is only the beginning.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/genriel/sets/72157623376093724/

On Wed, Apr 7, 2010 at 12:16 AM, Christopher Lincoln <cclinco at gmail.com>wrote:

> as we are getting short on time, set up happens on Thursday, we decided to
> work with the simplest plan.  If we are able to get the wireless webcams to
> work, great, if not, we will have the USB bulk extenders as a back up.
>
> Christopher
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Apr 7, 2010 at 12:05 AM, Chris Paget <ivegotta at tombom.co.uk>wrote:
>
>> Wait, what happened to the wifi plan?  I've got a nice little wireless
>> webcam here that only needs 2 wires to give it 5V and it'll give you
>> live video over wifi.  I thought someone else was bringing an access
>> point for my wifi stream to land at - what's with the USB bulk extenders?
>>
>> Cheers!
>>
>> Chris
>>
>>
>> On 04/06/2010 11:57 PM, Christopher Lincoln wrote:
>> > Spacebridge Meeting notes 2010.04.06
>> >
>> > Yuri's Night
>> >  - Balloon (bring clean (and spare) and tampered one)
>> >  - paracord 300 feet (Brian is pickign that up)
>> >  - Helium (2 tanks, Nils)
>> >  - Nils will drop off teh helium tanks on thursday
>> >  - Nils will bring his 7 gallon jug will water
>> >
>> > Payload
>> >  - Styro bin (.7 lb)
>> >  - 300 ft paracord (.8 lb) (Brian)
>> >  - 6 pin M to 4 pin M USB adapter
>> >  - 3x 15' feet of USB repeater cable (1 lb per 15 ft) (Brian)
>> >  - 1 spare USB hub ( to bridge the 5 meter limit for USB) [40 grams
>> each]
>> >  - 1 canons for after the fact pictures [.4 lbs each]
>> >  - USB cam [30 grams]
>> >  - noisebridge banner
>> >
>> > Display table
>> >  - payload bus
>> >  - parachute
>> >  - G1
>> >  - Opentracker
>> >  - GPS antenna
>> >  - Cable harness
>> >  - Dipole antenna
>> >  - Package tracker (if found)
>> >  - walky talky
>> >  - A700 camera (Blake)
>> >  - paracord (Brian)
>> >
>> > Auxiliary
>> >  - Zipties (Brian)
>> >  - 12' x 12' Tarp (Brian)
>> >  - Latex gloves (Brian)
>> >  - Gaff tape (Brian)
>> >  - Powerstrip (provided)
>> >  - Table (provided)
>> >  - 22" LCD Monitor (Albert)
>> >  - laptop x2 (Christopher for projector w/ slideshow, Brian for webcam
>> feed)
>> >  - projector screen (Christopher)
>> >  - projector
>> >  - USB drive with images (Christopher)
>> >
>> > DO:
>> >  - Email NASA to get names on setup list(Chris)
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > We are missing a cardboard box full of stuff that was present at the
>> > last launch
>> > What we know is missing
>> >  - G1
>> >  - Package tracker
>> >  - balloon
>> >  - ziptie bag
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > Space mailing list
>> > Space at lists.noisebridge.net
>> > https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/space
>> _______________________________________________
>> Space mailing list
>> Space at lists.noisebridge.net
>> https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/space
>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Space mailing list
> Space at lists.noisebridge.net
> https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/space
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.noisebridge.net/pipermail/space/attachments/20100407/1fb6d3de/attachment.html>