We have a few commands which we can send to our onboard xbee controller.  We can ping the balloon, repeat a message, request information, and set settings.  These commands are typed in a normal serial terminal (like putty), and this…

I finally got out today to do a range test with the xbees, but it was almost dark.  Here is a short video: We found that our RHCP antennas (right hand circular polarization – not red hot chili peppers) did…

I searched for a long time online but was not able to find a lot of information regarding how successful people were using the xbee pro xsc radios at 20 miles up.  I did read one report of a balloon that used…

There are many components to the balloon’s electronics, so I will try to cover each section in a summarized overview. One of the biggest design goals here is reliability and fail safes.  From every system down to every line of code we need…

Hello and welcome. The Clarkson near space balloon is a project between the Clarkson University ham radio club ‘k2cc’ and a few alumni to build a weather balloon and send it to  > 100,000 feet.  I am working on an…