Hacker News: radeeyate

New comment by radeeyate in "Show HN: We chased a weather balloon across Montana and never found it"

radeeyate — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 04:38:25 +0000

That was really our main concern. Being our first launch, we didn't want to risk it and wanted to wait until we were more comfortable with the process until taking that step.

New comment by radeeyate in "Show HN: We chased a weather balloon across Montana and never found it"

radeeyate — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 00:12:36 +0000

I have my license, and I noted about this in the post. I experimented with the U4B for tracking and found it not to be reliable enough. For the future, I'm planning on using the 70 cm ham band for LoRa.

New comment by radeeyate in "Show HN: We chased a weather balloon across Montana and never found it"

radeeyate — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 19:56:31 +0000

I think another point I hadn't included was the flexibility I had with prototyping different boxes. The hardware was changing all the time, and being able to just 3d print another revision was very convenient.

If I did something like that with styrofoam, it probably would have gotten pretty expensive. The precision you get from printing was also a plus, as there needed to be slots for cameras, antennas, and circuit board mounting holes.

New comment by radeeyate in "Show HN: We chased a weather balloon across Montana and never found it"

radeeyate — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 19:53:41 +0000

Yep, the radio link runs LoRa on the 33 cm band (915 MHz)

New comment by radeeyate in "Show HN: We chased a weather balloon across Montana and never found it"

radeeyate — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 18:10:18 +0000

I found that surprising too! This probably isn't a completely accurate number, as the sensor is black and likely experienced some heating from the sun. Something also worth noting is that different layers of the atmosphere experience different temperatures www.noaa.gov/jetstream/atmosphere/layers-of-atmosphere

New comment by radeeyate in "Show HN: We chased a weather balloon across Montana and never found it"

radeeyate — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 18:06:53 +0000

Images are all in order, but some have missing packets.

The problem with SSTV is the power required. From some looking it seems that transmitting would need at least 5 watts. This wouldn't be feasible running on the balloon, as it was powered by Energizer Ultimate Lithium batteries.

Show HN: We chased a weather balloon across Montana and never found it

radeeyate — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 17:33:32 +0000

Since April, I have been working with Sam Flynn (https://drook.dev) to make this balloon payload, UpLink. We did a similar launch last year with Hack Club but this was our first independent launch.

UpLink was a 491 gram payload testing the insulation properties of 3D printing filaments, while also transmitting 320x240 images over a radio link -- up from the 18x10 images last year!

This is a writeup on our engineering process, mistakes made, and learning experiences. It covers:

- Custom electronics designed in KiCad

- Firmware design

- Results from the data we received on the ground

- Image transmission

- Launch day logistics, and where things went wrong

All hardware, software, firmware, and CAD is available on GitHub: https://github.com/radeeyate/UpLink, licensed + certified as open source hardware: https://certification.oshwa.org/us002826.html

If you just want to see the images received, I put up a gallery here: https://uplink.gallery.radi8.dev/

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, let me know. I'm happy to answer anything!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49377660

Points: 60

# Comments: 26

Stenchill: 3D Printable Solder Paste Stencil Generator

radeeyate — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 00:48:37 +0000

Article URL: https://www.stenchill.com/en/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48953981

Points: 83

# Comments: 26

New comment by radeeyate in "Designing and assembling my first PCB"

radeeyate — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 06:14:00 +0000

I can vouch for OSH Park. Wonderful company, nice people, and really good quality boards. Pads lift so much easier on the cheap Chinese boards that I think it alone makes it worth it to choose local manufacturers. The price is a bit steep for bigger boards but if you're working on a project that they are interested in, they provided financial support every so often. I've gotten a few boards sponsored by them!

New comment by radeeyate in "Ghost Font: A font that humans can read but AI cannot"

radeeyate — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 15:49:02 +0000

This is another writeup from quite a while of someone else doing it with ffmpeg and imagemagick. It goes over a lot of details on how it was done. A better writeup than this one in my opinion! I also think the end result is much more readable, but it is missing the static text in the background.

https://oliveratkinson.net/static-captcha/

8192 Core RISC-V Cluster [video]

radeeyate — Sat, 04 Jul 2026 16:34:17 +0000

Article URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMR3IXF2sWw

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48786682

Points: 10

# Comments: 0

We Still Haven't Solved HDR [video]

radeeyate — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 14:10:05 +0000

Article URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hAVA6_Sczs

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48698458

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by radeeyate in "Segmented type appreciation corner (2018)"

radeeyate — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 20:01:57 +0000

I've been looking for something exactly like this, actually! I'm making a hardware device that is a habit tracker, and the screen will be a few 7 segment displays. Being able to simulate the displays like this is very nice. Also very cool that it displays whatever you type in!