There you go !

The first series of prototypes has gone to La Poste!

In a few days, Pioupious will start to bloom on paragliding take-offs and on kite spots.

I was going to mark “it was quite an adventure”. But no: it's more like the very beginning of a great adventure 😉 Now that the prototypes are sent, I'll be able to launch the orders. This is the starting signal I was waiting for.

That's pretty good, the article in the FFVL magazine has just been released:

But but but… It's @BalisePioupiou in the Mag of the @FFVL ! Very nice to read @nb4ld at breakfast. pic.twitter.com/Id8koZRg4j

— Geraldine Lepere (@Gelepere) June 21, 2014

And since then my phone hasn't stopped ringing. I also receive a lot of emails.

Oh yes, because in the article it says that orders are already open. Except that the article, I wrote it at the beginning of May. And that at the time, I didn't expect the cards to go make smoke.

Nice designs

In the absence of orders already open − it happens, I promise − you can already contemplate the readings of the very first pioupiou: http://pioupiou.fr/1 (easy to remember, the address!).

Again, this is custom-driven engineering. I do not hide from you that before doing that, I took a quick look at what was being done by the competition.

I was very surprised: While measurements of the average wind and gusts are commonly found, the minimum wind is almost systematically forgotten. That's a shame. Moles matter! Especially for soaring, kiting and boarding!

So here is a first attempt at a “homemade” wind graph.

The dark line is the average wind, with the min/max amplitude in the background.

I imagine that in this way, we are better aware of the regularity of the wind.

The painting too

But before playing with the computer, we had to bring out the old paintbrushes from primary school.

What's good with electronics is that bug fixes are still a lot more fun than when you're doing software...

So I made a little detour to Bricoman, to relieve myself of the twelve euros that a fake Drémel costs. (at this price, I dare not even imagine under what conditions they are made).

Anyway, once the thirty or so cards went through the grinder, I emptied three bombs of keyboard cleaner to dust it all off.

The cashier at the supermarket must have taken me for a drug addict, but at the same time at three euros the bomb, it's still cheaper than buying a compressor.

I preferred to invest in my future, with a nice mask to breathe the good vapors of toluene.

We come to painting...

As I had damaged my cards, it seemed logical to re-varnish them to protect them from oxidation.

But that's not the real pretext.

In fact, I had bought this canister a long time ago. It's called “Tropicalization Varnish”. And as its name suggests, it is made to tropicalize the cards, ie to protect them from hostile environments.

Concretely, we smear it all over the board, covering the components, so that it becomes waterproof. That way Pioupiou no longer fears humidity. I can play with it in my bath.

The moment of truth

Finally, before drowning everything in varnish, there remained the last fundamental step: going through the Pioupiou tree!

Objective: to ensure the operation of each beacon. To be certain that they all say roughly the same thing.

It was just after the collective tanning session, to test the solar panels and the battery charge.

Besides, I believe that some batteries have chewed up during my improvised short-circuits. That said, I deliberately made the choice to use them anyway. This will allow me to study their behavior over the long term. And at worst, if they don't make it through the summer, we'll see each other at the Coupe Icare to exchange them...

Better than the UV cabin for the recalcitrant:

I will still have heaps of things to tell you. But since the computer clock shows 00:47, we'll stop there. Tomorrow I'll get back to it early!

It's a crazy job, but I've never been so stimulated in my life. I'm having a blast, and my little finger tells me it's just the beginning. That's really what the school didn't know how to give me. It's a shame: without this eternal boredom, we were made to get along very well.

Finally, if I hadn't skipped school so much to do computer and paragliding, I wouldn't be here playing weather 😉

Bonus for English speakers: Coder’s High − Programming is just like drugs, except the dealer pays you.

This article is a chapter in the history of Piou Piou, the one-of-a-kind weather beacon.

If this project is close to your heart, you can give us the means to improve Pioupiou and invent the rest of his family. All donations collected will be assigned exclusively to the research and development budget.

You can also send us a check payable to Bac Plus Zero, 12 rue Servan, 38000 Grenoble. (attach a short note).