Today while I was typing away at my journal, my dad started something behind my back (I mean he sits behind me, so it couldn’t have happened any other way). When I took a break, he showed me what he had been working on: a new tracking solution. Based on the experience we had with the launch yesterday and how the laptop almost died before we’d even reached the N2, we decided that it would be best to find alternate methods of using the Radiosondes that didn’t require the Laptop until it was absolutely necessary.
The Tracker 2.0 used a web-based approach that could be accessed by a mobile phone, without using the laptop on the road. This could be accomplished by setting up a laptop at Intermet and running the D-MET software, using their ground stations to track the balloon. There would then be a piece of code in the background that would read the DAT file being created and interpret the data so that it could be pushed to the server at regular intervals, which the server (being our computer at home) could then draw a line on top of Google Maps embedded into the website of the actual path the balloon had taken, along with altitude data and last known position. With this approach we would only need to move over to the laptop once Intermet’s ground stations lost the signal of the payload as it drops below the mountains on the horizon. When this happens, we would move over to laptop and track it with the portable tracker.
To break this down into simpler terms, this is how the process will (hopefully) work:
Firstly, a laptop with code similar to the code we wrote for the previous tracker will be connected to the internet at Intermet and will have access to their ground stations. Next, we will start a sounding on that laptop, which would create a DAT file with all the GPS data. The piece of code on the laptop will then read that DAT file and send only the latitude, longitude and altitude to our computers at home. Once the data has been received at our home computers, which are acting as the servers, they will store the GPS values into a database. The website that was built will then access this database and from it draw a line on top of the Google Maps API of the path the balloon took. API stands for Application Programming Interface and is defined as:
“A set of functions and procedures that allow the creation of application which access the features or data of an operating system, application or other service.”
In this case, the Google Maps API, allowed our website to access Google Maps and embed it into our website, which the data from the database is then able to draw the balloon path over it.
A dropdown menu was also added to display the altitude of the balloon at any given time, as well as the exact latitude and longitude, so that it could be copied easily if needed.
This entire system relies entirely on the information from the ground stations at Intermet, so when those stopped picking up a signal, we would have to switch over to the laptop system, which could also potentially upload to our computers via a mobile hotspot.
By doing the tracking this way, we would save intensive power usage on the laptop, minimizing the chance of failure.
This is currently just a proof of concept; however we will try and bring this to reality for Mission 2.
