Low cost lighter-than-air data acquisition and flight control system

The primary purpose of this investigation was to see if an inexpensive data acquisition and flight control avionics system could be created using a commercial off-the-shelf cell phone coupled with an Iridium Short Burst Data (SBD) device. In order to be successful, the avionics system would need to reliably perform data acquisition and recording as well as send data to and receive commands from a ground station. A system consisting of a standard Android S5 cell phone running a custom app, Iridium SBD, Texas Instruments (TI) Sensor Tag, DC-DC converter, metal heat sink and lithium battery pack power supply was enclosed in a Styrofoam container and placed on a boom of a balloon gondola, which launched from Fort Sumner, New Mexico on September 4th, 2015. At the same time, the ground station consisted of a standard laptop attached to an Iridium SBD device running custom ground station software in San Antonio, Texas, approximately 500 miles away from the launch site. The cell phone based avionics system captured and transmitted data as well as received commands from the ground station, while the ground station received data packets from and sent commands to the avionics system. This paper discusses the architecture and design of the system, the results of the flight test, and finally how the system could be used in further high altitude ballooning applications.