The class can be taken as one of 3 different experiences:
Lite experience
Full experience
Alumni experience
Lite Experience
Both the Lite and Full experience students will join for 8 weeks to learn about how electronics are used in the stratosphere to record sensor data, capture footage, send telemetry, communicate wirelessly with the ground, and answer scientific questions. Students will then follow along over four sessions to create a sample electronic sensor and recording device using Arduino microcontrollers, a bit of soldering, and coding in Arduino IDE. Students in the Lite Experience are also invited to join and participate on launch day(s) in the Summer.
Full Experience
In the Full experience, students will continue on to design and build their own actual custom scientific payload aboard a high altitude balloon that will fly to the edge of space. Students will dive deep into how to design scientific experiments, circuit design, coding, custom PCB design, soldering, and structural mounting. Students will also participate in the planning, building, launching, tracking, and recovery of a high altitude balloon in Summer. After recovery, they will analyze the data recorded during the mission, and finally, be given the opportunity to present their experiments to industry professionals at the annual HamXposition conference in August.
Alumni Experience
This is for students that have already taken the Full Experience and feel ready to work in a more independent environment. Students can work to better answer the questions they set out to answer the previous year by refining and improving on their experiments. Students can work in teams to self manage and schedule their projects, and have access to all manner of custom parts. In the alumni experience, students are free to go in whatever direction their project leads, and alumni projects may go on for several years, depending on the ambition of the students.
Schedule
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We will have three free info sessions in October/November where students and parents can learn more about the class. Attending one of the info sessions is mandatory for taking the class.
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The class will officially began on November 15th. The three classes will meet Saturdays from 1-2pm. After that, the classes will become hands on and meet from 1pm-3pm. Full and Alumni experience students continue until the HamXposition convention in late August, where they will be encouraged to present their projects.
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Students can optionally show up at 12:30pm each week for social time before starting the class.
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Students will be able to stay for extra time after class if they wish to continue working on their projects until 5pm.
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In July, we will launch on the first weekend day with suitable weather. Because high altitude balloon launches require good weather, we cannot predict the exact day in advance. This will be an exciting day packed with adventure.
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The class culminates in an opportunity for Full and Alumni students to present their projects to a crowd at the annual HamXposition conference in late August. The conference can provide a fun and educational experience for technology-oriented kids and families and is free for students.
Free for members of NESciTech. Lab fee per student - $55
(Certain experiments that exceed weight or volume capacity may require an extra launch contribution - not to exceed $50 - to help with launch expenses.)
Background Science
Students will learn to design, build, code, and analyze scientific experiments created using electronics such as Arduino microcontrollers and electronic sensors. Students who already have experience with these tools can push themselves toward more ambitious projects, however they will be guided by the S.M.A.R.T. rule: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-Bound.
Going beyond the basics, students will learn to design their own perfboard circuits, solder wires and components together, and build custom PCBs.
Students will also learn from mentors about the physics and engineering involved in floating a payload to the stratosphere and some of the research done today using high altitude balloons. They will use the scientific method to design and build their own experiments to launch aboard a high altitude balloon in the Summer.
Personalized Experiments
Each student will have the opportunity to own their own experiment, or work in a group on a shared experiment. Students will also learn how to integrate their separate experiments together into a shared system. These experiments can include the use of electronics, depending on their comfort with circuit design and programming. Mentors will be available to help. Students are encouraged to create a name and acronym for their experiments, along with a mission patch sticker to affix to the outside of the payload.
Engineering
Students will be learning real world electrical engineering and programming skills with the help of mentors experienced in electrical engineering, programming, and launching high altitude balloons. While working on their own experiments, students are encouraged to challenge themselves and think creatively to solve problems. However, because this project will be entirely built and launched by the class, they will need to work together to design the payload as a whole. This includes steps such as integrating their code and circuits together, designing the enclosure and how the various experiments will be mounted, planning and tying the rigging to the parachute and balloon, performing calculations to determine size of balloon, size of parachute, and maximum weight allowance.
Students will also learn about some of the advanced techniques used to track the balloon’s position during the flight using radio transmitters, and have the opportunity to build their own ground or mobile tracking stations to track weather balloons using a Raspberry Pi in a series of optional Saturday morning amateur radio workshops.
Launch and Recovery
Students will be involved in every aspect of the launch, pending their availability. Launch day is an exciting event for everyone involved, and can be experienced in many different ways. Students will be invited to come to the launch itself, and actually work together to prepare the payload, its various instruments, set up all the rigging, fill the balloon and release it together. Due to wind patterns in New England, the launch location will most likely be a 1-2 hour drive west of NEST.
If they would like, students and their parents can also participate in “the chase.” This involves tracking the balloon’s position online, adjusting predictions on the fly, and navigating together to arrive at the approximate location of the payload’s landing. The team will then use ham radio antennas to find the exact location of the payload on the ground, or more likely, in a tree. If students are not available to join in the launch or chase in person, they can help the team by tracking the balloon’s position online and communicating in real time with the chase team.
The final step of launch day is the recovery effort. Most often in New England, the balloon will land in a tree, often deep into a wooded area. Depending on the landing location, the team will judge their next steps, including talking to the land owner and searching for the payload on foot. Mentors can work together with parents to determine if it’s appropriate to bring the kids to find the payload depending on the circumstances of the location. In general, we find land owners are very accommodating to balloon teams to recover their payloads and often just as interested as us in seeing the payload, watching any footage it captured, and hearing about the mission.
Assuming we are able to get to the payload, which is by no means a sure thing, recovery is still not guaranteed. We will do everything possible to recover it, including using our electronic cutdown system, spending several hours to get lines up into trees and pull the payload down, or if necessary, hiring a local tree climber to bring it down at a later time. This process can often be long and frustrating, but when we finally get it, crack it open, and watch the footage it recorded, the excitement and relief makes a very memorable end to the day.
Analysis
After recovery, if all goes well, students will meet again to analyze the results of their experiments. Any specialized equipment needed to evaluate the results of the experiments will be brought into New England Sci-Tech, and students can begin analysis. Students will then write up brief slides summarizing their experiment and the conclusions they have drawn from the results of their experiment. Students will then be encouraged to join in a group presentation about their mission and results in front of an audience at the annual HamXposition in Marlborough in August.