Raspberry Pi has already been into near space, and now the little board's newly-released camera module can claim the same thing. Released earlier this month, one developer got his hands on a pre-production model of the Raspberry Pi Camera module and decided to send it on a little trip.
Dave Akerman wrote on his website that he built a lightweight Raspberry Pi tracker using a model A Pi and a pre-production Pi camera. The whole thing was surrounded by a foam replica of the Raspberry Pi logo and attached to a weather balloon. The big berry was powered by AA batteries, which were substituted in after Akerman realized his original plan of four AAAs would mean only 4.5 hours of run time.
The balloon was launched with its payload and off it went, flying for roughly three hours. Once the balloon popped, it came back down to Earth where it was retrieved by a man who happened to be nearby when the raspberry landed. He phoned Dave who went to collect it. The device captured three kinds of images, including some absolutely gorgeous high resolution ones. Head on over to his website for full details of the flight path and, of course, all of the photos.
