In which we sent and iPhone and a camera to the stratosphere – referred to as near-space – or 100,000 feet above the earth using a pair of custom-built iPhone built iOS apps and a very impressive server-side flightpath predictor.
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.
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.
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
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…
Realized that this was the perfect day to test the parachute for the balloon. So Oksana came over and we went to the rusty tower over in Liberty to test it. This time there was no wind so it we climbed up to the second platform (higher than that did NOT look safe) and tossed…
We attempted to find a place to toss the capsule off of to test the parachute, but it got so damn windy in the afternoon that it was next to impossible. We climbed an old radio tower by Liberty village, but the wind was going in the wrong direction and would have sailed the thing…
I’ve hit some blockers with The UK website today, so I decided that I was time I actually followed through with getting WhatNotToSayToGirls.com up and running. I figure that if I’m constantly in development for the Find A Wingman app, I’m not going to want to work on anything else until like November. Therefore, I…
Oksy and I met up this afternoon after Salsa to work on the balloon. We made some serious progress and finalized our task list for the launch. Turns out Oksy somehow lost the camera we were going to use so she’s going to buy one of those hi-def video cameras that sky-divers use. We watched…
Got an email from the PR Manager at Grapple today about the space balloon. She seems pretty stoked about some cross-promotional opportunities! We really need to get this project up in the air (literally!) as fast as we can do it. Of course the press is only a bonus for me, as I really just…
Had some drinks with my Aussie friend Erin tonight. Also used the excursion to test the transmitter app for the space balloon and over the course of the night it produced over 49,000 location updates. It brought the battery way down, but that’s to be expected. I think I’ll be able to use a far…