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  • No Invading Robots Afterall

    Discovered today that it’s apparently “impossible” to upload a photo to a website from an iPhone. I suppose I can understand the reasons behind this such as device security and deliberately forcing developers to create applications, but that pretty much buggers up our plans for the website. This, plus Oksana having to return the robots…

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  • Robots on the way

    Oksana ordered the robots today. They should arrive tomorrow. I love how ridiculously easy it is to find things like this on the Internet. Balloons, helium, robot paratroopers… Each one found on the first google search page looking for it. Oksana’s friend Alicia raised concerns about the potential ecological impact of bursting 140 balloons in…

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  • Invading Robots

    While we were eagerly awaiting the return of our balloon yesterday, Oksana and I discussed what to do with all the left over helium we had.  The idea “mini balloon launch” came up, in which we would send normal-sized latex balloons with QR codes containing messages attached to them up into the skys. Then, when…

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  • Balloon Launch 1 Report

    Balloon Launch 1 Report

    Today we launched an iPhone and a camera to the stratosphere and captured HD video at 100,000 ft. Read more for photos, videos, and details of the experiment.

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  • Tomorrow We Launch!

    Just finished finalizing our preparations for the balloon launch tomorrow. While we were searching around for last minute information and instructions on how to tie the balloon, we found a guy who received over $2000 as a kickstarter fund to do a similar high-altitude project. If only we had thought of that! I found an…

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  • More Balloon Tweaks

    Test with the balloon app today revealed that setting the location manager with an distance limit of 300m was not producing accurate altitude information until very late. This could make it very difficult to find the device if we need to tell it to select a higher accuracy. In going to scale it down to…

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  • Balloon Apps Are Done

    I think I’ve FINALLY got the interfaces done for the two iPhone apps. Just gotta test them for the next couple of days and then we launch Wednesday.

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  • Flight Predictions Now In App

    I’ve implemented the ability to show the path of the balloon as a line drawn with apple’s 2D drawing libraries over top of the map. It took me a couple of days to get working correctly, but I’m excited to test it during the ride to Montreal tomorrow.  

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  • CUSF Landing Prediction Now Running

    After installing a lot of things on one of my production servers (gasp!) I got the web interface of the balloon landing CUSF prediction web service up and running, and even got the executable that does the calculations to build. All I need to do now if figure out why the two won’t communicate

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  • Found A Prefect Landing Prediction Service

    4:28 PM Found an excellent web service I can use for the balloon app to predict the flight path of the capsule using weather conditions. It won’t be perfect, but I’m going to see about integrating it tonight 11:59 AM Couldn’t get it integrated tonight as I had to finally get around to buying a…

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