During our last flight, we lost one of our Go Pro cameras that was mounted to the size of a pod because it likely got ripped off when falling through the trees after it separated from the rest of the balloon and fell from 70,000 ft. I was visiting the Fab Lab at MCC to check on another project and Tom Pensabene, the Dean of IT and e-Learning, asked if I had any projects with the ballooning that might require an engineering solution. He had forged a relationship with a new engineering company and was interested in collaborating on an interesting project. We met with Dane Foster of KuL 3D and a couple of their engineers. They do 3D printing projects and rapid prototyping.

In our discussion, I mentioned how we would like to get better video from the balloon. Usually, we mount a Go Pro camera to a pod and it is subject to the whim of the winds which includes a lot of twisting and tilting. If I watch the footage at regular speed, it is almost enough to give me motion sickness. There are some simple solutions to get more stable video footage, including making a large PVC frame to minimize the twisting or attaching the camera directly to the balloon rather than a pod. The solution we chose to pursue involved purchasing 3 new Go Pro 3+ cameras because of their light weight and a frame that would allow them to take video simultaneously and stitch it together into a panorama in a  video editing program.

With their permission, I am able to share photos of the prototype. We plan to do a test launch on March 14, 2015. I think it is a clever and elegant solution and I can’t wait to see test video from it.