We at the Santa barbara Hackerspace have been involved in over a dozen weather balloon launches. We have had a lot of fun with these launches and learned a lot, but found some issues with existing means of tracking. Most of the commercially available APRS trackers are closed source, large, and heavy, all of which add to the cost and complexity of launching a balloon. So we decided to do something about it, and the Tracksoar was born. The Tracksoar is designed to be flown under anything capable of lifting 60+ grams, including balloons, RC planes, quad copters, or anything else that flies. The Tracksoar uses the amateur 2 meter radio band (144.390MHz in the US) which requires an amateur radio license to operate.

Tracksoar has been developed for nearly two years now and has been proven on many flights. We have gone through several iterations improving and refining the Tracksoar and continue to develop new features. Tracksoar is an open source project, and all source code, schematic and board files are available here.