radeeyate

That was really our main concern. Being our first launch, we didn't want to risk it and wanted to wait until we were more comfortable with the process until taking that step.

I have my license, and I noted about this in the post. I experimented with the U4B for tracking and found it not to be reliable enough. For the future, I'm planning on using the 70 cm ham band for LoRa.

I think another point I hadn't included was the flexibility I had with prototyping different boxes. The hardware was changing all the time, and being able to just 3d print another revision was very convenient.

If I did something like that with styrofoam, it probably would have gotten pretty expensive. The precision you get from printing was also a plus, as there needed to be slots for cameras, antennas, and circuit board mounting holes.

Yep, the radio link runs LoRa on the 33 cm band (915 MHz)

I found that surprising too! This probably isn't a completely accurate number, as the sensor is black and likely experienced some heating from the sun. Something also worth noting is that different layers of the atmosphere experience different temperatures www.noaa.gov/jetstream/atmosphere/layers-of-atmosphere

Images are all in order, but some have missing packets.

The problem with SSTV is the power required. From some looking it seems that transmitting would need at least 5 watts. This wouldn't be feasible running on the balloon, as it was powered by Energizer Ultimate Lithium batteries.

I can vouch for OSH Park. Wonderful company, nice people, and really good quality boards. Pads lift so much easier on the cheap Chinese boards that I think it alone makes it worth it to choose local manufacturers. The price is a bit steep for bigger boards but if you're working on a project that they are interested in, they provided financial support every so often. I've gotten a few boards sponsored by them!

I've been looking for something exactly like this, actually! I'm making a hardware device that is a habit tracker, and the screen will be a few 7 segment displays. Being able to simulate the displays like this is very nice. Also very cool that it displays whatever you type in!