Over the weekend a man named Dave Akerman, self described as an armchair astronaut, sent a Raspberry Pi and one of the newly released 5 MegaPixel Pi cameras up, up, up and away, as part of his “Eye in the Sky Project”. Akerman entertains himself toying with three different types of HAB (high altitude ballooning projects). Buzz, as he calls it, is for light weight payloads for both maximum altitude and longer lasting flights. Cloud, for normal sized photographic payloads and of course Pie, for flights with the Raspberry Pi computer.

There are countless unique ideas being brought to life with the incredibly affordable 25 dollar Pi, yet having one shot towards space to capture breathtaking images of our earth was a first for the little computer. Sure, any camera could have taken a ride on a hot air balloon. But, it has only been a couple of weeks since the release of the 5MP Pi Camera, and what a way to give it a try!

What was fun for me was to read Akerman's narrated version of the entire experience on his website. With a not-so-great previous experience with a ballooning flight (in regards to poor image quality), Akerman knew he had to make sure of a few things before attempting the venture once more.

On for the second try he went, and with good weather conditions expected all was good-to-go. In addition to the latest Pi software installed, Akerman wanted to change the code of the camera a bit in order for it to take not only one image per minute, but three different types. Small images meant for one radio channel, medium for another and lastly large images to be stored on an SD card for him to see high-res images on his computer.

And there goes the launch! “Easiest launch ever!”, as stated by Akerman. The expected flight time for the Pi in the Sky was about three hours, which would give both Akerman and his GPS plenty of time to track it's travels, as well as get home in time to watch as images come in! Fun as that was for him, he couldn't forget there comes a time where you need to rally back up and go find the landing site for the thing. While driving in the car with the tracking device doing its duty, he quickly realized he made a bit of an inaccurate hypotheses regarding the final flight distance. Because the wind acted softer during the flight, it carried the Pi slower than expected. In turn, this meant he was possibly driving to an incorrect landing spot than earlier anticipated.

Another hiccup. Akerman expected an alert within one mile of the landing spot, yet he received no such radio signal. It could not be that the transmitter stopped working, as it had been soldered on the thing in case of a rough landing. Just as he began experiencing fear that his project was lost in the wild, he got a phone call. Smartly, he equipped the internal payload with not just a tracking device, but his phone number. A man heard the crash outside of his property and within minutes Akerman was reunited, with an amazing 70 percent of the balloon still intact! Funny enough, the reason for the lack of a tracking signal was because the camera was faced down in the man's garage!

End result? Absolutely breathtaking images; images caught with one of the most affordable, lightweight and innovative computers ever invented. After a beautiful, three hour journey over the UK 29 miles above earth, I find nothing but happiness and success in this story. In addition, the happy rescuer was proud to be photographed showcasing the impressive parachute, not to mention the news that the Raspberry Pi works as if it had never taken such a journey. Brilliant.