The video output from the Pi is either composite video (from an RCA connector) or HDMI. The Pi with no enclosure would almost certainly be damaged, especially around my shack. In retrospect, I think this was a good idea. On the advice of much that I read, I also purchased an enclosure. I purchased the Pi from Newark Element 14. Would it have the "horsepower" necessary to do logging and to decode digital signals? At the time, there were few reports of hams attempting to use the Pi for logging and digital communications. My only concern was the ARM processor running at 700Mhz. When I first read about the Raspberry Pi, I thought it would be perfect. I also wanted something with more modest power requirements and something that I might leave on 24/7. But my desk space is limited and I needed a computer with a smaller "footprint" than my laptop. For digital operation, I use fldigi which is written and maintained by David W1HKJ and his associates. For logging I use CQRLOG, a wonderful logging program that is written and maintained by Petr OK2CQR and Martin OK1RR. I have an old Dell laptop (Inspiron 1420) running Ubuntu Linux that works great for both logging and running digital modes. Although I'm not an avid digital operator, I occasionally enjoy a PSK-31 QSO or sometimes I like to "read the mail" or copy a weather map on WEFAX. Plus, the ability to read parameters directly from your radio is the essence of convenience (and laziness). Keeping up with the States and countries you've worked and each station's QSL history is fantastic. For the past 12 months or so after reading about the exploits of Dave Akerman and his first launching of a Raspberry Pi into near space I've been tinkering with the idea of launching a balloon myself.I have two major applications for a computer in my shack: logging and digital mode operation. Although there isn't a huge HAB community in NZ there have been some previous launches, and there is plenty of good information and useful tools available via the UK HAS web site, and #highaltitude IRC channel. The IRC channel in particular has been a great source of information with many friendly people willing to share their experience and knowledge. It's also been very interesting tracking and watching launches live. Even from the other side of the globe it's sometimes possible to watch live video streams of flight preparations at the launch site and from the chase cars as they track balloons across the country-side. When video isn't available it's still possible to track progress via the live updates on the tracking site and running commentary on #highaltitude. Slowly different aspects of the project have been coming together. Most recently I reached my first major milestone, successfully transmitting and decoding telemetry. I've decided to blog about my exprience with this so far as it may be useful or interesting to others wanting to do something similar. Starting from the payload end and working through to the receiving and decoding end my setup looks like this: I'm planning on using a Raspberry Pi Model A for the payload although for development I'm using a Model B as I have a couple of these already on hand purchased from Element 14. As my day job is J2EE development, Java was my preferred choice of language for the payload control software.
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