Flew a Lepton 3.5 and PT2 on a high altitude balloon!

Sara Stafford

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Aug 7, 2018, 2:38:59 PM8/7/18

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Hello all,

This isn't quite a question but I thought I would share where I am currently at on my Lepton project and see if anyone has done something similar, or has any pointers or suggestions. Last week I flew a Lepton and PureThermal 2 board with a Raspberry Pi on a high altitude balloon. I took still images and saved the raw data to an SD card. Currently I am using a slightly modified uvc-radiometry code. I have not calibrated the sensor but I am looking into that as well. The temperatures and altitude the sensor experienced in flight clearly exceeded the environmental limitations as listed in the datasheet but it seemed to perform mostly really well. Some of the temps are definitely not accurate but I am hoping to be able to make changes to the code or some hardware improvements to increase the accuracy. My goal is to image the balloon itself and hopefully detect temperature changes across it. Not really sure this is possible with the Lepton, if that doesn't pan out, it can be used for imaging plenty of other things. Pretty cool little sensor though the software/firmware side has given me some heartburn.

Sara

Karl Parks

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Aug 7, 2018, 2:48:30 PM8/7/18

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Very cool! What's the goal of the project? What will the temperature changes across mean?

Karl

Sara Stafford

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Aug 7, 2018, 2:56:59 PM8/7/18

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Karl,

I am trying to detect temperature changes in the balloon as it ascends that could indicate a thermal wake. Not sure if the Lepton has the kind of resolution or capability to accurately measure such low temps (air temp is down to about -50 C). I think the high end FLIR cameras might be able to do it but are prohibitively expensive for this. Another thing would be to measure accurately the temp of the payload above or below, which stays much warmer than surrounding air due to electronics and batteries.

Sara

Nati Barchilon

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Jan 29, 2019, 9:29:06 AM1/29/19

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Hi Sara,

Nice project ! Have you made any progress in calibration ? im stuck on some questions , would love to consult with you.

what about you karl ? have you tried to calibrate the lepton ?

thanks and good luck

בתאריך יום שלישי, 7 באוגוסט 2018 בשעה 11:56:59 UTC-7, מאת Sara Stafford:

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