In 2014 my storm chasing partner and I came up with a plan to launch a weather balloon with 6 gopros attached to capture 360 degree camera footage. We chased after some supercells in July 2014 in Nebraska, Kansas, and Colorado.
After chasing for several hours, we were finally able to deploy our weather balloon onto a dying supercell, with more distant supercells west of it. Here's video of the actual deployment (I am doing the filming):
Warning Language!
When we launched the probe, we were approximately 20 miles from the Colorado border in Kansas, just south of the Nebraska border. The balloon probe traveled westward up into the storm system and ended up landing 35 miles away in a Colorado field.
A pic of the probe in the field can be seen here at this tweet: https://twitter.com/aaronjayjack/status/480589138681282561
I got quite wet and muddy trekking through that field: https://twitter.com/aaronjayjack/status/480589414389673984
We recovered the footage, all intact and damage-free. The final product was the stitching together of the 6 camera footage for an interactive 360 experience. This is a youtube video of a recording of me interacting with the 360 footage:
The actual 360 interactive video experience can be found here: http://scudchasers.org/media/
While we aren't editors by trade, and this was several years ago before all the fancy 360 cameras were released, the footage is not 100% perfect.
About the Probe:
The probe was a weather ballon filled with helium. Attached to the payload were the 6 gopro cameras and radiosonde. The gopro cameras were protected by their waterproof cases inside of a styrofoam housing we created that had handwarmers packed inside of it to keep the cameras warm. We fit a parachute over the balloon; as the balloon gained altitude, it expands. The balloon expanded, filling out the parachute, with the balloon eventually bursting. The parachute opened as planned, and the device came back to earth. We were able to track the device using GPS.
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