Windows Phone 7 in the Clouds!
Segoz is proud to be a partner of the ASTRA project at the University of Southampton. We are providing technologies to assist with the recording and retrieval of scientific data from high-altitude instrumentation platforms.
We aim to show that affordable solutions can be used for the collection and analysis of data from the upper stratosphere, by utilising light, inexpensive, unmanned aircraft. Segoz have demonstrated that a hybrid Cloud-to-organisation infrastructure can be combined with commodity hardware such as a Windows Phone 7 to collect, retrieve and analyse data. By harnessing the power of Windows Azure we have demonstrated near-real-time processing and dissemination of the sensor data to scientists thus assisting with experiment decisions as well as providing status information to other interested parties.
The Segoz Tracker App for Windows Phone 7 allows the aircraft to determine its location by GPS, and - where there is mobile network coverage - report this data back to a Windows Azure worker. It enables the ground team to track the balloon’s last known location, and also to see fellow scientists' locations on an interactive map, thereby facilitating the swift recovery of the payload, including the phone and additional instrumentation.
In the ASTRA 7 project, the aircraft is a meteorological balloon, filled with helium gas. The flight distance can be controlled by varying the amount of helium used. The Windows Azure workers are used to calculate predicted landing sites, based on factors such as payload weight and atmospheric conditions, for various helium quantities. Once a landing site has been chosen and the flight commenced, the Azure workers update the predicted trajectory based on updated location information received from a Windows Phone 7 device within the payload. The latest predicted landing sites are automatically sent out to the balloon followers.
"...a first-of-its-kind experiment to probe the stratosphere using an unmanned vehicle." - Computer Weekly