14 DAY TRIAL // Dropbox is a great way of keeping your files safe and in sync across your computers. This comes especially handy when you're on the go, as long as you have an internet connection, you can get to your files and have new files sent to the web.
But Dropbox wanted to test the extremes of this and, during its traditional Hack Week, a couple of interns thought up of a new way to test the Android app's camera upload function, by sending a couple of phones into space.
Well, into the higher atmosphere, but still high enough to see the blackness of space and the curvature of the Earth. As you can imagine, there were several problems with this, the biggest of which wasn't sending the phones into space in the first place.
The interns wanted the phones to upload photos and videos of what they saw in real-time, but for this they needed an internet connection.
Mobile internet is fickle in the best of conditions, let alone several miles into the atmosphere and several tens of miles in whichever direction the wind was blowing.
WiFi was chosen for the deed, not that there were any real alternatives. WiFi signal sometimes has a tough time reaching the kitchen, but this was in direct sight with no obstructions, so professional equipment should be able to carry the signal several tens of miles.
"The first few minutes after lift off were incredibly exciting. The balloon rose quickly (more than 15 feet per second) and in just minutes was a small speck in the sky. For several minutes we successfully aimed our dish at the balloon, feeding it a WiFi signal which resulted in live photos uploaded over Dropbox," the two interns described their adventure.
"But the GPS data never materialized and eventually we were flying blind! We were soon left to search the sky with our dish, waving it back and forth and monitoring the strength of the connection, our only feedback for finding our increasingly invisible balloon," they added. You can find all of the details and how it turned out on the Dropbox blog.
