A Teddy Bear Recreates the Famous High Altitude Leap of Felix Baumgartner

Posted on Aug 28 2013 - 5:54pm by Thomas Sharp

Do you remember that crazy day in October 2012? How we gasped in amazement as a chap called Felix threw himself into the sky and plummeted to Earth.

It seems fair to say that few of us expected a soft toy called Babbage to follow his example less than a year later. It is a strange world we live in, though, and Babbage has now successfully completed his descent.

The distance involved is the same as with Felix Baumgartner’s famous leap (39 km). However, Babbage is a toy bear controlled by a Raspberry Pi computer and he climbed up to that height thanks to a balloon filled with hydrogen.

Video and Snaps on the Way Down

babbageThe small computer inside our cuddly friend sent back details of his current location and took pictures and a video of his brave descent to the surface of the planet.

The man behind Babbage is a high altitude balloon expert called Dave Akerman, who has used the Raspberry Pi in other high altitude projects in the past. He sent the teddy (the Pi mascot) up to start his adventure near to Newbury in Berkshire on the 26th of August, sitting in a specially made cradle.

Mr Akerman was happy with the project and said that it has gone “brilliantly”, with the bear landing in open land near Shaftesbury while his creator went looking for him in a car.

The simple Pi was designed to be used by children but it is popular with people who want to create their own gadgets using a simple computer.

1 Comment so far. Feel free to join this conversation.

  1. Raspberry pi March 15, 2014 at 5:20 am - Reply

    Interesting Pi projects…. simple and easy to program and build a toy gadgets

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