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Hello,

I am planing on purchasing the geiger counter and kit along with anything else to make this project doable. Here's the situation, my team is going to launch a high altitude balloon, which will reach about 100k feet. Attached to this balloon will be a couple payloads with equipment monitoring data, however we want to attach geiger meter to monitor radiation. The catch is that everything hanging from the ballon must weigh under 2.5Kg (5.5lbs).
I have read the data logging tutorial but due to weight requirements we cannot put a computer on the payload. Is there any way to send a live stream of data from the balloon to the ground or even store data on a device for later review? We are also thinking about putting an iPhone or its components on the payload for tracking, and even to run the geiger bot, but i did not see any data storage options on the app page.

Thanks!

ESP,

The geiger counter outputs serial data once per second, so it should be possible to save this data to an SD card or other storage device using an Arduino, an SD card shield, and a custom sketch. I know that others have used this kit in high altitude balloons so there might be some code and schematics available. There is some info here: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3333&p=6018&hilit=balloon#p6018

One thing I should point out is that other teams building high altitude balloons have seen some issues with the high voltage power supply at high altitudes. I believe the problems are related to corona discharge or moisture. So you may need to insulate all high voltage connections with something like corona-dope prior to launch.