It's been a long while since I updated the blog post, but I've spent the 14 months since the last launch completely rebuilding the hardware, and refactoring code for reliability and fallback modes. Upgrading all the phones for HD video took me to Android 4.4.2 and that hugely screwed up the existing code for.... almost everything. Android locked down a lot of stuff that made taking remote photos, videos, or even keeping background services alive, so I had a lot of rebuilding to do. The major addition since the last launch is an Iridium Satellite modem courtesy of Rock7mobile.
I didn't like the idea of relying on cellular communications and a LIFO message buffer to splurge telemetry once the capsule descended. I've seen 4 bars and LTE at 10,000 feet in small aircraft over the central valley, but if the capsule lands in the Sierras or similar, I might be out of luck. I also got my Ham license so I could run APRS through a Radiometrix transmitter, but the thought of all that RF, and potentially heavy antennas to reach APRS repeaters/endpoints seemed more risky. Hence the RockBlock modem. It runs a 9602 modem that reaches the Iridium network, and sends and receives its own SMS-like messages called SBD. 270 bytes max a shot, but I've managed to compress a complete status message with temps, battery levels, GPS coordinates, release statuses and more into about 44 bytes.
Further shark jumping, I have three Android phones now, all on a bluetooth master/slave arrangement. The primary phone can now share the exact GPS coordinates of the capsule above 60,000 feet, the secondary and tertiary phones can share the satellite modem, and most importantly, using bluetooth commands, I can now completely synchronize taking of photos, videos (slow-mo!) during some critical phases of the flight. We'll get multi angle views in HD of some pretty epic stuff.
Now in testing mode. No. More. New. Code.