portland

Alexander Scheeline and Kathleen Kelley at the University of Illinois Department of Chemistry have a cool spectrophotmeter project for cell phones that pre-dates our spectrometer, and their software runs on Android.

Again, from the Yahoo kite patents group comes a balloon similar to the Kingfisher, sold by Southern Balloon Works and the Skystar 300, by Aeronautics systems.

This creepy surveillance video from Skystar shows their system in action:

For reasons of pedigree I'm optimistic about the functionality of this design and want to try building a scaled down replica out of mylar sleeping bags. The crucial features that I want to integrate are 1) the use (I think) of a Picavet style rigging to hang the payload, and 2) the use of two side-by-side envelopes.

A Picavet rig is a very common type of KAP/BAP rig, I've added it to the juice bottle in a fairly simple way, using 1/2" key rings.

Our balloon kit is nearly together but one thing has been vexing me-- trying to find a lead-free snap swivel. I like coast lock snap swivels, like the ones sold at kitebuilder.com where I got my first coast lock snap swivel. I tracked back this swivel to the Sampo company, manufacturer of Rosco swivels.

I've made an instructional video on efficient image sorting with Preview and Finder, for quickly winnowing down big groups of images to small sets, ready for MapKnitter:

This is for use with the PET Bottle Rig

Instead of using a balled up piece of tape, a pebble, or some other thing to hold down my camera's shutter, I've gone to using a knot. This makes it easy to hold in place, and makes setting it easier. I prefer a rubber band, but tape also holds it down. tape may be more useful for bulging, non rectangular cameras.