{"id":1631,"date":"2011-09-25T20:39:10","date_gmt":"2011-09-25T20:39:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/?p=1631"},"modified":"2011-09-25T20:39:10","modified_gmt":"2011-09-25T20:39:10","slug":"balloonist-prepares-tedx-demo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/?p=1631","title":{"rendered":"Balloonist prepares TEDx demo"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_1632\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-1632\" href=\"http:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/?attachment_id=1632\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1632\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-1632\" title=\"timzaman_548x365\" src=\"http:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/timzaman_548x365-300x199.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"199\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-1632\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Tim Zaman with his flight robot. (Photo: Tomas van Dijk)<\/p><\/div>\n<p><strong>Tim Zaman did it again. He launched a helium balloon and made photos at  the edge of space. But this time, he beamed the images back to base.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>When MSc biorobotics student, Tim Zaman, launched a helium balloon  last year, and brought back spectacular images of the IJsselmeer and the  near-black edge of space at from 30 kilometres high, many enjoyed his  adventurous enterprise. The payload had continuously transmitted its  gps-position, which enabled Tim and his friends to track the balloon and  retrieve the black box from the IJsselmeer, in which it had dropped.  Only then could he inspect the photos.<!--more--><br \/>\nTEDxDelft organiser Rob  Speekenbrink contacted Zaman for a lecture at TEDxDelft on 7 November,  suggesting that Zaman should show live images from the balloon during  his talk.<\/p>\n<p>Zaman took the challenge and totally rebuilt his flying robot, using  specially designed printboards from China. The middle print, containing  the ARM-processor (known from the iPad), is fed 5 Volts from the bottom  print, while the top print contains a gps-receiver and gsm module. On  board there is a webcam and a tiny radio transmitter. With only 10 mW  power, the transmitter doesn\u2019t require authorisation to operate.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the extremely low power output (about 1 percent of a  cellphone) does limit the data transmission to 1.200 bits per second  maximum. \u201cIn two hours, we sent 119 photos, which equals 6 million bits  or about 0.8 megabyte,\u201d Zaman says. He clearly enjoys getting the best  from his simple equipment.<br \/>\nTo reach that point, Zaman had to build in  lots of ingenious tricks. For transmitting the images, for example, he  used an error detection and correction code (known as the Reed-Salomon  code), which uses extra information to correct up to 7 percent of the  lost data. Moreover, the computer automatically selects the best shots  for transmission from the hundreds of images made. \u201cYou don\u2019t just want  clouds or sky,\u201d Zaman explains.<\/p>\n<p>Some two hours before his lecture, Zaman will release his balloon, so  that it will have risen above the November clouds by the time the  balloonist student takes the podium.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.delta.tudelft.nl\/artikel\/tedxdelft-belletjes-in-je-brein\/23745\">TEDxDelft: belletjes in je brein<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.hollandshoogte.nl\/\" target=\"_blank\">www.hollandshoogte.nl<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.tedxdelft.nl\/\" target=\"_blank\">www.tedxdelft.nl<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tim Zaman did it again. He launched a helium balloon and made photos at the edge of space. But this time, he beamed the images back to base. When MSc biorobotics student, Tim Zaman, launched a helium balloon last year, and brought back spectacular images of the IJsselmeer and the near-black edge of space at [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6],"tags":[56,368,434],"class_list":["post-1631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-delta","tag-balloon","tag-robot","tag-tim-zaman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1631\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}