A four-person capstone project at Waterloo to build a reusable imaging system operating at ~36 km altitude (near space). We launched a custom capsule via weather balloon with a remotely controlled camera, sending downscaled photos in real time over a 900 MHz downlink and recovering full-resolution images when the capsule parachuted back down. The project received an A++ and several awards.

Some highlights:

• Custom 900 MHz high-gain parabolic antenna for long-range communications
• Hand-soldered circuit board (with SMT!) housing an ARM processor, GPS, accelerometer, digital compass, UHF modem, and GSM module
• Hacked Canon PowerShot camera on a servo for remote control via PWM
• Custom enclosure built to survive the cold, humidity, and shock of near space
• Nichrome wire cutdown mechanism to trigger the parachute descent