You're standing in the middle of this vast—as far as the eye can see—grassland. And this thing that you just let go of in downtown ��«����Ƶ has traveled there on its own. There's this moment of disbelief until you're right there with it. ~ Zack Weaver, CEAS lecturer, ATLAS Institute

Video from almost 101,000 feet, beginning shortly before the balloon bursts.

First students built the instrumentation. Then they attached it to a high-altitude weather balloon that took it to an altitude of 101,000 feet. Thanks to the geolocation technology they had incorporated, they were then able to locate it 120 miles away in Eastern Colorado. 
 

The collaborative project was part of a class taught by ATLAS Lecturer Zack Weaver called Creative Technologies, a required class in the College of Engineering MS in Creative Technology and Design, offered through the ATLAS Institute. 

The instrumentation they built included an Arduino microcontroller connected to sensors that measured and recorded location, temperature, air pressure and altitude. A GoPro was sent along for the ride, capturing continuous video of the four-hour flight that began outside the ��«����Ƶ Public Library’s BLDG 61 Makerspace, where Weaver works, and ended in a field in Eastern Colorado 120 miles away.

The students, many of whom began the class without much of a technical background, wrote and tested the code for the microcontroller, designed and built the insulated casing that held the camera and protected the electronics and batteries from temperatures of approximately -35° Fahrenheit. The payload design allowed environmental sensors and a GPS antenna to capture and record data to an SD card. The students were then able to plot and compare flight simulation data and actual data visualized in Google Earth.

“The students learned which creative technologies could be used to pull off this feat,” Weaver said. “It’s probably not the right terminology, but they get a ‘crash course’—learning many things very quickly.”

Besides coding and electronics, students also learned wireless communication, design and fabrication techniques, including laser cutting, 3D printing and integrating electronic components into the student-designed payload. As required by the Federal Aviation Administration, the team registered the balloon flight, providing its anticipated flight path based on their models.

“This class is a blast,” said Neill Shikada, who is enrolled in the Creative Industries track of the ATLAS Creative Technologies and Design master's program. “I've come from knowing nothing about electronics to designing quite a few aspects of the instrumentation for our balloon flight."

Alejandra Guerro, a social impact master’s student, echoed Shikada’s sentiments. “I'm definitely enjoying the class,” she said.  “A lot of technologies that seemed intimidating or difficult, now feel more accessible. I've learned that I can learn just about anything with enough Googling, patience and help from classmates.”

“Needle in a stack of needles”
As the pressure decreased with the rising altitude, the 7-foot-diameter balloon at ground level expanded to an estimated 25 feet before bursting. Its dizzying descent was captured .

Prediction software provided an estimate of the balloon’s location within a five-kilometer radius. Then, using the Automated Packet Reporting System (APRS), a ham radio network connected directly to a web server, they were able to pinpoint the balloon’s location to within one-tenth of a mile. As a backup, the team put a small commercial GPS tracker onboard that tracked the balloon's position online in real-time, but the APRS system worked perfectly. 

“We added as many redundant tracking systems as possible without weighing it down more than necessary,” Weaver said. “Every gram is critical to how high the balloon can fly.”

Because the flight took approximately four hours, Weaver and some of the students had plenty of time to drive out to Eastern Colorado, initially aiming for where they thought the balloon would land and then course-correcting once they had actual coordinates. 

“We dream of seeing this thing coming down, but in Eastern Colorado, it’s like finding a needle in a stack of needles,” Weaver said.

Crash course
In addition to mapping the actual flight path on Google Earth, students were asked to analyze variations and anomalies compared to the predicted flight path. While examining the data, students discovered that the sensors recorded higher temperatures than the APRS reported and concluded they were mistakenly measuring the interior of their insulated casing. They also learned the limitations of a $5 altitude sensor, which loses accuracy over 60,000 feet.  

“These limitations, and the opportunity to read the data to discover them, are intentionally baked into the experience,” said Weaver. “It contextualizes the affordances and constraints of the toolset.”
 
“The project helped the students understand that they can’t learn all creative technologies,” he added. “We set a context that provided constraints for deciding which technologies are needed and to what extent. It helped them to not be overwhelmed by an overabundance of choices.” 
    
The balloon flight was the key project for the first half of the Creative Technologies course; the second half is designed so students use the balloon experience as a reference for their independent design projects. There’s also a lineup of guest speakers, giving students diverse perspectives on similar types of technologies and how they are used professionally.

“I've shown them a reasonable amount of new technologies,” Weaver said. “The students will define any additional technologies they need to work with on a more individual basis. So at this point, they're in charge of the class, and I'm just there as support to run logistics and to bring in cool people for them to meet.

“I remember sometimes feeling almost complete isolation as a grad student on campus," said Weaver. "Getting off-campus and out in the world came as such a novelty. I think this group of students had that experience, particularly driving out to Eastern Colorado. And they didn't just learn how to work with electronics and design tools; they applied them, and it took them to new places."

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Zack Weaver, an ATLAS lecturer who played a key role in establishing the ATLAS BTU Lab, stands in front of Maker Made 2020. Weaver is a creative technologist at BLDG 61: ��«����Ƶ Library Makerspace and a curator for Maker Made.

A group of six artists and technologists connected to the ATLAS community contributed to ��«����Ƶ Public Library’s , which runs through March 28.

Who: Everyone is invited

What: Maker Made 2022, a gallery show celebrating the diverse and inspiring work by local makers.

When: Runs through March 28. The exhibit is open whenever the library is open.

Where: Canyon Gallery, ��«����Ƶ Public Library, 9th Street and Canyon Boulevard, ��«����Ƶ

Cost: Free

The fourth annual gallery show celebrates the diverse and inspiring work by local makers, representing the collective energy and ambition of a community of inventors, designers, engineers, artists, craftspeople and tinkerers.

“There’s no better way to celebrate a period of creative output than a party and a show-and-tell, and that’s what Maker Made has become,” says Zack Weaver, one of the show’s curators and a creative technologist at BLDG 61: ��«����Ƶ Library Makerspace.  BLDG 61’s makerspace provides maker education to the public for free in an “inspiring and inclusive environment.”

Weaver, an ATLAS lecturer who played a key role in establishing the ATLAS BTU Lab, says inspiration for Maker Made dates back to his days as a Carnegie Mellon student of Professor Mark Gross, now director of the ATLAS Institute. Gross, along with university colleagues organized annual exhibitions, similar to the ATLAS Expo, Weaver says.

The ATLAS Connection
Creative Technology and Design graduates Luciano Mejia and Chaz Golin helped curate Maker Made 2022. Hired as "Contract Killer Creative Technologists" in late 2021, the two were major contributors to the show’s success. For exhibits by members of the ATLAS community, see below.

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Joining the global grassroots response to shortfalls in personal protective equipment, members of the ATLAS community are 3D printing parts for face shields to help protect local medical personnel against the highly contagious novel coronavirus.

From basements, offices and closets the whirring sounds of 3D printers is heard day and night in the homes of at least six members of the ATLAS community: Pete Pascente, master’s student; Wayne Seltzer, technologist-in-residence; Zack Weaver, instructor and creative technologist for ��«����Ƶ Library makerspace (BLDG 61); Sheiva Rezvani, instructor; Camilla Friedman-Gerlicz, instructor; and Aileen Pierce, senior instructor. 

Together, they are part of the worldwide maker community that is sharing designs and making personal protective equipment to compensate for the global shortage that has left medical workers unable to adequately protect themselves and their patients against the coronavirus.

These ATLAS community members are joined by members of several other campus groups who are also 3D printing face-shield parts, including the Idea Forge, the Integrated Teaching & Learning Program, the Program in Environmental Design, CU Science Discovery, the Department of Aerospace Engineering, Department of Physics, the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics and the BEEM Lab in Mechanical Engineering, said Rebecca Komarek, assistant director of Idea Forge and a coordinator for campus face shield production with the statewide Make4Covid initiative. As of April 14, Make4Covid reported it had delivered nearly 11,750 pieces of equipment, including more than 1,400 face shields made by CU ��«����Ƶ groups.

Seltzer and Pascente originally collaborated with the NoCo Face Shield Project, a volunteer organization building protective face shields for Northern Colorado healthcare facilities, delivering their first batch of parts on March 28 to the Fort Collins Creator Hub. More recently, NoCo has joined forces with Make4Covid, which means a lot less driving. In an attempt to speed up print times, Pascente and Seltzer are beginning to experiment with larger nozzles for their 3D printers.

Between Pascente, Seltzer and Weaver, who have been at this longer than the others, they have manufactured parts for roughly 400 shields. Weaver, who is focusing on making completed face shields, cutting his own visors by hand from thin sheets of transparent plastic, has finished about 100, including a dozen delivered to Wardenburg Health Center on the CU ��«����Ƶ campus. Seltzer and Pascente are printing headbands and curved plastic reinforcements that attach to the top and bottom of transparent visors. “The focus is to print a lot of parts and get them to people who are assembling and distributing them,” said Seltzer. 

The minimal design many of the makers are using originated with physicians who collaborated with the Czech Republic Ministry of Health and 3D printer manufacturer Prusa. 

“As one of many people making parts at home 24/7, I'm glad to be contributing to this project,” Seltzer said.          
 

Other ATLAS coronavirus-related projects:
, by CTD student Ruhan Yang

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