{"id":1370,"date":"2013-06-20T16:48:58","date_gmt":"2013-06-20T21:48:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bardagjy.com\/?p=1370"},"modified":"2013-06-20T16:48:58","modified_gmt":"2013-06-20T21:48:58","slug":"vaisala-rs80-radiosonde-teardown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bardagjy.com\/?p=1370","title":{"rendered":"Vaisala RS80 Radiosonde Teardown"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Just<\/a>

Just after unboxing.. well unbagging.<\/p><\/div>\n

An interesting piece of gear passed across my desk, a Viasala RS80 Radiosonde<\/a>. The RS80 radiosondes is a small electronic payload which is typically lofted into the upper atmosphere by a helium filled balloon. During its journey, it relays to the ground (or records) environmental information, such as barometric pressure, temperature, and humidity. Its location is determined through GPS.<\/p>\n

Radiosondes are interesting pieces of gear, on one hand, they are fundamentally disposable – as such, must be very low cost; on the other, they are specialized pieces of scientific equipement – something which typically demands top dollar. Since they are lofted into the air by (now costly<\/a>) helium filled balloons, they must be as light as possible. Because they are typically not recovered, they must not contain hazardous materials such as heavy metals (see the odd battery). The payload may encounter extremely low temperatures, and large temperature gradients due to radiative heating. These extremes cause trouble with temperature sensitive components such as electrolytic capacitors and crystals.<\/p>\n

Teardown<\/h2>\n

This particular model is the RS80-15GH, according to this datasheet<\/a> the ’15’ suffix denotes a 405Mhz transmit frequency, the ‘G’ denotes a GPS receiver, and the ‘H’ denotes the H-HUMIDICAP option, a humidity sensor.<\/p>\n

Opening the hermetic bag reveals a cardboard and styrofoam encased radiosonde, a spool of string, a bag of desiccant, and a short piece of punched tape. The tape, below, presumably contains calibration information about the various sensors in the radiosonde. Fascinating, I’ve never seen paper punch tape in person. Looks like a byte every 1\/8 of an inch or so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \t\t\n\t\t\t\t