A lot of blood, sweat and tears has gone into building and making work, the two HAB (High Altitude Balloon) Trackers for St. Richards Catholic College. They will be launched in October. Having not done any serious HAB work for a while (Last launch was this time last year) I had forgotten what a pain they are to build and program. However, I now have a procedure to program them which isn’t too difficult. The issues start when you try and use the latest version of the Arduino IDE to upload the firmware. Firmware written a few versions ago does not compile. Luckily, I still have the older version installed on the main PC so I can compile the binary and upload that directly.

In other goings on, I’ve been gifted a Anet A8 3D Printer. I can now start to build it up. It will mean finding space in my limited ‘workshop’ but I’m eager to design cases for my projects and print them myself. I have been watching many 3D Design tutorials and have yet to decide on a software package to use.

Meanwhile, the second iteration of the Active Fuse Tester is being fabricated, along with another small project, the Octopus Component tester.

Fuse Tester and Octopus Component Tester

The Octopus Component Tester is a device that you connect to an oscilloscope in X-Y mode to show the state of components. Depending on the curve you get on screen, you can evaluate if the component is open or closed circuit and whether it is operational.

Octopus Component Tester Traces

These devices have been around for many years, way back in to the time of valves! I have wanted to have one on the bench for a while and it will add to my arsenal of test equipment as well as being an easy project to build for others. As always, details will be published as soon as the boards are proved to work.