Electronic Strand

Our job was to create a circuit to make the camera take pictures as it flew on the balloon. It used an LM311N integrated circuit to trigger the camera. We first simulated it on the computer in the Multisim program to see if it worked. We would then have tested it in the real world on a bread board, but we ran out of time.

We had to talk to the mechanical engineering and chemical engineering teams to get an idea of how long the balloon would be in the air for, so we could calibrate the resistors and capacitors in the circuit to take pictures at suitable intervals. As the balloon would be flying for roughly 3 minutes, so we took pictures every 10 seconds.

On Sunday, we soldered the circuit onto verroboard. It was a bit tricky, so we made a few mistakes soldering the components in the right places. Luckily, we had a solder sucker on hand to correct mistakes. Eventually, the circuit worked and we took a few test pictures.

Finally, we took the camera circuit to the mechanical and chemical engineering teams to attach it to the balloon. We did this with a few strands of wire bent into hooks passed through holes in the verroboard. We launched the balloon and it flew for 3 minutes and 37 seconds. Although the camera has recorded 26 pictures, we have yet to see how good they were.