After reaching the summit of Mount Everest, the SensorTile.box took flight on a hot-air balloon over France.
At ST we like to test our products in challenging conditions – like the frigid temperatures at 8,000m altitude during the Mount Everest expedition with Luca Colli or during a flight on a hot-air balloon in France.
If you are interested in the Mount Everest expedition check out the articles. Luca Colli told us about the challenges that went into preparing for such a trip and the lessons that he had learned along the way. He left for Mount Everest with two SensorTile.box, our new modules with powerful sensors and three user modes, to test how our devices would perform in some of the harshest conditions on the planet. Many of our readers followed Luca’s adventures, his arrival at Base Camp, and his struggles. And at the end of his adventure, we talked to us about his experience, the good and the bad.
Cybevasion took the SensorTile.box in the sky
In France this summer, close to Chambley-Bussières, a small village known for the Grand Est Mondial Air Ballons festival, a SensorTile.box reached the sky for the first time onboard a hot-air balloon.
The hot-air balloon “Cybevasion” was crewed by French Pilot Jean-Louis Desouche and his navigator Veniamin Belyaev from ST Moscow bringing our SensorTile.box in its nice blue case.
The STEVAL-MKSBOX1V1 (SensorTile.box) is a ready-to-use box kit with Bluetooth and a comprehensive sensor platform. It allows developers to create apps based on motion and environmental sensor data, regardless of their level of expertise.
The SensorTile.box board fits into a small plastic box with a long-life rechargeable battery. Â The ST BLE Sensor smartphone app connects via Bluetooth to the board and allows you to immediately begin using the wide range of default IoT and wearable sensor applications.
In Expert Mode, you can build customs apps from your selection of SensorTile.box sensors and the available data and algorithms. This multi-sensor kit allows you to design wireless IoT and wearable sensor applications quickly and easily, without performing any programming.
SensorTile.box includes a firmware programming and debugging interface that allows professional developers to engage in more complex firmware code development using the STM32 Open Development Environment (STM32 ODE), which includes a sensing AI function pack with neural network libraries.
On the 29 of July, over 450 hot air balloons colored the sky with the objective of beating the world record for numbers of balloons in flight in the same area. The show was amazing and the record number of balloons (456) was equaled but not beaten due to some balloons that did not make it.
Information captured by the SensorTile.box
It was an amazing spectacle with the flight path followed by the LPS22HHÂ pressure sensor embedded in SensorTile.box. The altitude measurements derived from the pressure data correlated very well with the reference values of a 1-meter-accuracy altimeter based on a GNSS signal.
Using the altimeter data we were also able to calculate the rate of ascent of the balloon. And the results were impressive. Thanks to the high ODR of the LPS22HH (Output Data Rate from 1 Hz to 200 Hz) we discovered that the vertical velocity aboard the “Cybevasion” was up to 5 m/s. For sure the time taken by the balloon to ascend was much less than the time taken by Luca Colli to reach the summit of Everest!
After these two extreme adventures, SensorTile.box is now looking for a good company to undertake new adventures.
