This term Pablo Joyce, one of our London consultants, has been planning a High Altitude Balloon Flight at St Paul’s Catholic Primary School and the launch is scheduled for tomorrow morning!

Weather permitting the class will be launching a high altitude balloon into the stratosphere at 11 am with a Raspberry Pi attached to a Pi the Sky board and a LORA board – this will record the flight telemetry as the balloon drifts with the wind and beam a balloon’s eye view of the world. There will also be 3 Raspberry Pi Zeros on-board, each with a camera attached, taking a mix of stills and videos but not sending any data back so these will be seen when the payload is found. Once launched a car chase will begin to follow the balloon from launch site to landing site – which could be anywhere from a muddy ditch, up a tree or somewhere in the North Sea! The flight time is expected to be around 2 and half hours and altitude of over 30,000m is planned.

If you would like to follow the balloon’s journey the school will be tweeting @StPaulHAB, #stpaulshab #skycademy. You can track the flight here and the transmitters on the balloon will have the details of altitude, ascent/descent rate and other telemetry information here and here there will be two transmitters, STP1 and STP2 on the balloon. You will also be able to see the progress of the car chase “the_O_mobile_:-)_chase” on the map.  The balloon eye view of the world will be beamed here.

The hourly prediction of where the balloon should land if set-off at 11am can be seen here. (The exact time of the launch will depend on the weather so be sure to check twitter for updates!)

This is one of the most ambitious projects a Turn IT On consultant has taken on and we are all excited to see the results. Fingers crossed for the perfect weather!