Ok, we like to share success and failure. And probably from failures you learn the most. Today we tried to launch our test payload, containing a motherbord, 3 web cams, a 2W WLAN transmitter, geiger counter, pressure and temperature sensor on a hydrogen weather balloon again... and we failed again. First of all the WLAN transmitter worked not. A day before in the laboratory everything worked fine. Also a second back up WLAN transmitter didn't do anything what you would expect from a WLAN transmitter. After painful debugging in the noonday heat of Nanjing which we shared with a lot of mosquitos, we decided to launch the payload without live transmitting of video, just GPS and a tracking device to find the payload again and storing the videos and data on the CF card of the motherboard. But suddenly the GPS gave no reliable coordinates anymore. After hours of fixing the payload finally hung on the weather balloon, but then the motherboard started to hang up all the time. We have learned a lot today, summarized: Don't use standard off- the-shelf components to do no standard things.

On the way to the launch side

Debugging

The payload. On the right the geiger counter to measure the cosmic radiation

The weather balloon is waiting in the shadow

The Chinse writing on the payload says: If you find this box and give it back, you'll get 800 RMB