It’s pretty easy to take a balloon, fill it up with helium, and send it up in to the upper atmosphere. It’s much harder to keep track of it and recover it when it falls back to Earth. If you’re trying to do that, you might find some value in the Tiny4FSK project from the New England Weather Balloon Society.
Tiny4FSK is intended to be a very small solution for high-altitude tracking. As you might have guessed from the name, it communicates via 4FSK—four frequency shift keying. Basically, it communicates data via four separate tones. Based around the SAMD21G18A microcontroller, it’s designed to run on a single AA battery, which should last for anywhere from 10-17 hours. It communicates via a Si4063 transmitter set up to communicate on 433.2 MHz, using the Horus Binary v2 system. As for data, it’s hooked up with a GPS module and a BME280 environmental sensor for location. The balloon can figure out where it is, and tell you the temperature, pressure, and humidity up there, too.
If you’re looking for a lightweight balloon tracker, this one might be very much up your alley. We’ve featured other projects in this vein, too. Meanwhile, if you’re developing something new in the high-altitude ballooning space, you could keep it to yourself. Or, alternatively, you could tell us via the tipsline and we’ll tell everybody else. Your call!
Quite the same as re-flashed RS41 (with RS41ng software which can do Horus v2 too). 10-17 hours battery time in what temperature?
And this is not lightweight in terms of high altitude ballooning, looks actually quite bulky. Large PCB and even full SMA connector?
Hello! The SMA is for development only. The aim was to only use 1x AA (or even AAA) battery, as opposed to the 2x AA used by the RS41, while maintaining good battery life. A new revision is in the works to be much smaller compared to this revision, so stay tuned! The RS41 PCB is roughly twice as heavy as the current version and also about twice as large.
Thank you for featuring my project! My new revision circuit board will be even smaller (the size of a gumstick)!
Looks interesting, not really impressed with the choice of another signal system when APRS would work fine and has a pretty big supporting ecosystem for tracking.
Wonder if they will make boards available to schools that want to try it out.
Hello! I actually have a breakdown comparing APRS and Horus Binary v2. The goal of this is to make this available to students, researchers, and educators, and schools is a very big target for me. I actually conducted a class at the school that I go to (a middle school), and we used this as infrastructure.
Here’s the breakdown in a research poster package:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/173erHb0MfFF4htj0cGblVwo2uqi6NlSAoiPumya2R7A/edit?usp=sharing
Probably because APRS is trash.
It needs a complete overhaul.
The QRP Labs U4B makes a LOT more sense to me.
https://qrp-labs.com/u4b
Hello! A few thoughts:
– The U4B is a beautiful unit, for pico ballooning. These types of balloons have many differences from traditional High-Altitude Balloons (HABs).
– The U4B uses a system called WSPR (and has a few other options). This transmits a 4-8 character maidenhead grid locator, which is great for circumnavigation, but if you want precise tracking down to ground level, you’ll need the full GPS lat/lon (or higher character grid locator).
– I believe that the U4B does not have any SMPS or power systems onboard. This can work fine for solar panels, but when powered from a battery, you’ll have to be careful about regulating the input voltage. Tiny4FSK features a TPS61200 boost (or buck) converter that works well with single/double cell batteries. (I could very well be wrong about this)
Thanks for your thoughts!
Just a couple more tidbits about this project!
-It’s being developed by a 13 year old ham (Max Kendall).
-This revision is still in development and not for sale yet.
-The SMA connector is only for testing, and it flies with a lightweight wire antenna.
-The next version will be significantly smaller, and it can also run on a AAA battery for extreme lightweight situations.
-It combines the advantages of an RS41 (fast transmit cycles, low power, robust decoding) with the lightweight and small form factor of lower power tracker boards developed by hams.
Is it FUD or can F-35 detect it?
I wonder why they used an Si4063? Is there a specific reason or is it just another RF transreceiver chip?
Hello! I used the Si4063 chip because of a few factors:
1. With the 4FSK peaks, other chipsets can apply an offset. So, when you program the chip to have an offset of 270 Hz, it actually applies a 244 Hz offset. This slight factor can become significant at higher altitudes, and it can be harder to decode.
2. It has a very low current draw, making it attractive for the project.
3. The Si4063 chipset is used by the Graw DFM-17 radiosondes, and it works beautifully in that industry setting, so I chose to go with that.
I hope that answers your question!