GPS tracking is on track

Since finding the camera payload is a pretty important part of the 'mission', a GPS system is the second most important passenger other than the cameras.  Past solutions sometimes were fairly complicated, consisting of GPS receivers, an Arduino/microprocessor board, and a transmitter.  Maybe it's not that complicated, but there are much more simple ways of doing the same thing.  Like I mentioned before, there are at least two examples of people using only a GPS enable phone.

Going for the easiest, COTS solution, I picked the Motorola i296 prepaid phone ($49.99 at BestBuy, $0.35 a day for unlimited data). You'd be surprised that a simple little candy bar phone that looks like it belongs in the late 90's would be capable of live GPS tracking (I was!).

I've always hated the Motorola UI because it was terrible.  Thankfully, it isn't too much of a pain to set up the phone.  All one needs to do is install a small Java program provided by the tracking site InstaMapper. It's a totally free and totally awesome site.  I'll send out a link later where people can track the balloon live on launch day. 

 

Granted this isn't the most robust solution for GPS tracking, since it needs to be within range of a cell tower to transmit the GPS data.  This isn't a huge issue, because I care more about where the payload is at 0 ft than I care about where it is at 80,000 ft (though that would be nice too).

As you can see, the phone is all set up and ready to go!  I'll make sure the battery is freshly charged, but other than that, she's ready to track.