Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Launch HN: Sorcerer (YC S24) – Weather balloons that collect more data

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 173 posts

Re: Launch HN: Sorcerer (YC S24) – Weather balloons that collect more data

#121

Post by Ecco »

mdorazio wrote: post #65
dev2point0 wrote: post #13

This is awesome, how do you manage climbing and descending with a balloon. Are you compressing the gas on board or using thermals?

I’d love to know, too. If it was me I’d use a small piezo plate on the side of the balloon to do it the same way hot air balloons do. Heat the gas in the balloon = go up, reverse the polarity to cool it = go down. That would be pretty energy inefficient, though, so hopefully their secret method is better. Loon used pumps and an interior air ballast like blimps do. So clearly there are a few ways.

Did you mean Pelletier?

Re: Launch HN: Sorcerer (YC S24) – Weather balloons that collect more data

#122

Post by avecchi-sorc »

popctrl wrote: post #55

This sounds like super interesting and meaningful work. Are you hiring, or do you have any advice for your average software engineer on getting into this space?

I was in the same boat. I've been a software engineer for as long as I can remember and always wanted to do more than just build B2B SaaS.

Max, the first engineer at Urban Sky, hit me up and asked if I wanted to build their mission control. At the time, Urban Sky was just a four-person team, so they couldn’t pay me as much, but I jumped at the chance, even though it meant taking about half my usual salary.

Funny enough, my SaaS background actually helped me create mission control software that was way ahead of the curve!

I guess my advice is, find a small company you're passionate about, where you can make a big impact, and be open to taking a pay cut. It helps the company take less of a risk on you, and you get to work on something that really matters. Plus, when you’re solving real problems, things tend to work out, and eventually, you’ll end up making what you should in salary.

Re: Launch HN: Sorcerer (YC S24) – Weather balloons that collect more data

#124

Post by OccamsMirror »

tndl wrote: post #23
xd1936 wrote: post #12

Very cool, congrats on the launch. You're spending nearly all of your time in the stratosphere collecting data, but what correlation does that have to ground forecasts? Are your "AI models" that you're producing forecasting stratosphere conditions, or more than that?

We cruise in the stratosphere until we gather enough solar power to descend to ground level. On the descent and descent we're collecting soundings, which is the data that's useful for all types of forecasts. Right now we're focused on the stratospheric forecasts because that's what we know really well (and we already have some interested customers). Our data/models are great for all kinds of forecasts, including grou…

Are you pairing your data with satellite observations?

Re: Launch HN: Sorcerer (YC S24) – Weather balloons that collect more data

#126

Post by unwind »

Ecco wrote: post #121
mdorazio wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d love to know, too. If it was me I’d use a small piezo plate on the side of the balloon to do it the same way hot air balloons do. Heat the gas in the balloon = go up, reverse the polarity to cool it = go down. That would be pretty energy inefficient, though, so hopefully their secret method is better. Loon used pumps and an interior air ballast like blimps do. So clearly there are a few ways.

Did you mean Pelletier?

It's Peltier.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_effect#Peltie...

Re: Launch HN: Sorcerer (YC S24) – Weather balloons that collect more data

#129

Post by bigveech »

OccamsMirror wrote: post #124
tndl wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We cruise in the stratosphere until we gather enough solar power to descend to ground level. On the descent and descent we're collecting soundings, which is the data that's useful for all types of forecasts. Right now we're focused on the stratospheric forecasts because that's what we know really well (and we already have some interested customers). Our data/models are great for all kinds of forecasts, including grou…

Are you pairing your data with satellite observations?

Yes, however, like with traditional forecasts, we weigh our balloon observations much higher.

Re: Launch HN: Sorcerer (YC S24) – Weather balloons that collect more data

#130

Post by avecchi-sorc »

pkhodiyar wrote: post #127

curious to know how you guys store and process the data and make meaningful inferences out of the data collected. Redshift? BigQuery? Datazip?

Internally yes we use a data warehouse to store the raw observations. We go through a similar process to traditional NWP to produce forecasts except with a few AI steps in between. Unfortunately, the standard currently is to store these as large multi-dimensional data files like grib2/netCDF/zarr.

In case you’re curious, here’s where NOAA stores all their GFS related forecasts: https://registry.opendata.aws/noaa-gfs-bdp-pds/

Post reply on HN