One of the biggest technical challenges was designing the power distribution board, as the power supply that we connected to had a very large voltage range due to the vastly varying temperatures on the ground and at altitude. As the Raspberry Pi requires a very stable 5v supply, we often found that it would reboot in testing. We reached a solution that used large capacitors to maintain voltage if it dipped below 5v.

BalloonSat is a high-altitude international research mission for secondary schools held annually in Belgium. 

Our research goal was to determine the extent to which it was possible to triangulate the position of the balloon in 3D space at altitude using nothing more than the FM radio signals from broadcasting towers.

The experiment hardware consisted of an FM receiver, GPS module, power distribition PCB and a Raspberry Pi mounted on a wooden base.