Author: faludi

We have liftoff. My first Balloon Environmental Sensing test successfully “slipped the surly bonds of earth, and danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings” sending data back the whole time. First flight was at the Digital Naturalism Conference in Gamboa, Panama, featuring 10+ sensor values streaming from the balloon to an online data collection system and dashboard.

It was a big success!

This party-balloon platform is designed for inexpensive aerial environmental sensing. Balloon lofting is perfect for scientific research, educational programs, hacker workshops, technology art, as well as low-cost indoor or industrial monitoring. Is the humidity overhead the same as on the ground? Does wind speed change? Is it dusty up there? How much UV light penetrates the jungle canopy at different levels? These are all questions that can be answered with this platform.

Since advanced LTE wasn’t available in Panama and SigFox coverage was absent, I decided to use the Digital Naturalism Lab’s LoRaWAN gateway—long-range radio networking that uses very little battery power. The data collection firmware code was written in MicroPython running on a LoPy4 wireless microcontroller module from Pycom. This first set of tests used all the Pysense evaluation board sensors including light, temperature, altitude, humidity, pitch, roll and acceleration in three axis. This data was taken in real time at 30-second intervals and transmitted using LoRaWAN across Things Network servers to be displayed on a Cayenne dashboard. The Pybytes cloud platform appears promising too, I’m looking forward to exploring that more in later phases of the project.

Gamboa has one very small grocery store. It does not sell helium or any other noble gas. Luckily the generous David Bowen allowed our sensor package to hitch a ride on his drone during my first week, so up we went for initial testing. As is so often the case, even this partial test resulted in lots of changes. In this case I realized we needed a frame counter, better battery connections and voltage monitoring before flying again. A second shakedown flight on Bowen’s drone proved the value of these additions, and gave us an excellent sampling of the data to come. We also did a bunch of range testing work, which is covered in a separate blog post.

A taxi trip into Panama City brought us to Mundo de los Globos (World of Balloons) where helium tanks are available, along with 1-meter balloons in plenty of colors. With a full tank of the squeaky gas, we returned to Gamboa and I started inflating our ride to the sky.

The next morning it was time for the sensor package to take its first balloon ride, and up we went. Andy Quitmeyer got some amazing footage from his drone and Trevor Silverstein shot high-end video from the ground (coming soon). I could not have asked for a better documentation team. The balloon reached 60 meters (about 200 feet) above ground level, which was the limit of the reel line I was using for a tether.

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We got great data back from this flight, and soon made a second one—this time in a large field away from balloon-eating trees. It was easy to get LoRaWAN signal from altitude since LoRa works best in line-of-sight conditions. We plan to do more with the Things Network to support the biology and ecology research in Gamboa that are spearheaded by the local Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.

Here’s a screenshot of the data dashboard from the flight.

And a few graphs:

Another afternoon was set aside for a proper party-balloon experiment. Using a smaller battery I was able to loft the sensor package using 6 small balloons and the small amount of remaining helium. This worked too, though 7 balloons would have provided more lift and handled the wind better. Next time, more balloons!

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Data from these flights can be downloaded, and the MicroPython code for the LoPy4 or FiPy can be found on my GitHub.

For the next version of the Balloon Environmental Testing platform, my plan is to explore other sensors and wireless links. I’m especially interested in UV light, air quality, wind speed and loudness. In Gamboa we talked about trying some sound recording too. As the balloon itself is silent, it’s the perfect place to record. For wireless links I’m itching to explore some new cellular low-bandwidth, low-cost protocols, LTE Cat-M and NB-IoT, because they don’t require any dedicated base stations and should work great at the altitudes needed for balloon flights. Additional plans include extended day-long flights, free flight with GPS, and maybe look at hydrogen gas but not near any kids!

The initial prototype goal was to see if the full system will work, and it does! Gamboa was a great success for this project, giving me the time, venue and documentation assistance to bring this idea to life. If you get a chance to attend the next Dinacon, I strongly recommend it. And if you’re interested in balloon sensing for any experiment, class or project, let me know!

Rust is gorgeous. We marvel at its endless shades of ochre, red, orange and sienna. We appreciate the organic shapes created as right angles collapse and edges decay into jagged landscapes. Rust is poetic, photogenic, artistic and melancholy. It grows on its own and famously, never sleeps.

As an agricultural species, we love to garden. We plant seeds outdoors, water them diligently, watch the miracle of life, trim, weed, and appreciate the lush green plantscape we’ve created. Gardening gets right at our souls. But why limit ourselves to plants?

Let’s garden with rust! Rust gardening is easy and the perfect way to exploit a “brown thumb.” In some ways it’s identical to growing a plant garden. In other ways it’s the polar opposite. A rust garden is created by “planting” metal pieces outdoors where they can weather organically. Patience is required, though the process can be sped up with regular watering, plus a few other tricks. You’ll eventually be rewarded with lush decay, in a myriad of sunset colors. Of course, your rusted wonder won’t bear anything edible, but it also won’t attract any pests. You might even extract a centerpiece-worthy “bouquet” from your rust garden, in leiu of a traditional harvest. Of course pesticides are unnecessary, and weeding is entirely optional.

For this year’s Dinacon I’m planting a rust garden outside of a home in Gamboa, Panama. Since I’ll only be there for two weeks, I’ve chosen to accelerate the initial rusting process using a household concoction of white vinegar, peroxide and table salt. The results are instant, but really just a head start on what promises to be a post-industrial patch of sepia-toned disintegration, offsetting the riot of tropical greenery.

Here’s how to make your own rust garden.

1. Pick a patch of ground outdoors. You can also set up an indoor planter box or humidity-rich terrarium.
2. Gather some scrap iron or steel. If it’s already rusting, so much the better.  Painted or coated metals won’t rust quickly. Strip the paint and sand the metal for best results. If you’re not sure a metal will rust, try it anyway. Experimentation is a terrific way to learn, and the artist’s favored tool.
3. You can leave the metal to rust on its own outdoors, or water it regularly to accelerate the decay.
4. If you’re an impatient gardener, it’s easy to get some rust going immediately. Pour some white vinegar into a plastic spray bottle and mist your metal scraps until they are thoroughly moistened. Wait for the vinegar to dry, around 15 minutes. Next, in another spray bottle, mix:
   • two cups of hydrogen peroxide
   • four tablespoons of white vinegar
   • one-and-a-half teaspoons of table salt (why salt?)
5. Swirl the mixture until the salt has dissolved. Spray it onto your metal scraps and they will turn rusty as you watch. Allow the rusty metal to dry, then repeat as desired.* Careful with this mixture, it will rust anything it contacts instantly!
   

“Plant” other metal scraps as often as desired to create a variety of rusty delights. You can include non-ferrous metals like copper which will grow a green patina for contrast. Rust gardens are perfect for photography, try a macro lens for the most beautiful corrosion close-ups.

—Rob Faludi

* Rust recipe inspired by Bob Vila.

Technology separates us from nature, but does it need to? I used some of my stay at the Digital Naturalism Conference in Thailand to prototype a clock that determines local time of day from sunlight to promote a natural sense of timekeeping.

By using technology to encourage human relationships with nature, I hope to highlight that machines can encourage us to be *more* human and organic rather than slowly making people irrelevant. As a counterpoint to consuming industrialized time we can also obtain time from scratch, regaining control of the very pacing that drives our lives. The Sun Set Clock uses local solar time, therefore noon is when the sun is at apogee at our location. This is how time used to be measured, before telegraphs and transcontinental trains required a move to time zones, where the clock and the sun no longer match. This system isn’t concerned with exactitude–there’s plenty of systems to do that if you need it. Instead this clock can be used to mark the general progress of the day rather than creating anxiety around how every minute is used.

Sun Set Clock in its natural environment

The initial prototype uses light level changes to detect sunrise and sunset, with local noon being the point exactly between these two events. When the clock starts, it makes its best estimate of the time. For example, if it’s dark at startup, the clock assumes that it’s midnight because that’s the best guess you can make without more information. At sunrise, this corrects to 6 am (a higher-quality guess) and then at sunset it will correct to the proper local time (not time zone time but astronomical time at your precise location). All of this works, although it’s still a bit fragile–operating best in full view of the sky on a relatively sunny day. Dark clouds, deep shadows and porch lights can confuse it, so these will need to be addressed in a future version. For now, I’m enjoying what I think of as “some time of my own.” I hope you enjoy it too.

 

Sun Set Clock – Instructions for Use

Continue reading “Sun Set Clock – Prototype”