kevinh

kevinh

Well Known Member
Hi ya'll,

This morning I did an experiment with a little cheap-o ($80 used - Canon SD600) camera. I duct taped the camera to the underside of the wing and then flew a quick flight with a GPS auto geotagging each photo:

http://picasaweb.google.com/UncleSocks/Aerial?feat=directlink

(Click on View Map in the bottom right corner)

This was just a proof of concept - for my next flight I'm going to mount the camera to one of the wing inspection covers, taking a photo every 20 secs. With the spiffy googlemaps geotag integration, it should do a nice job of automatically adding public low altitude photos from everywhere I fly.
 
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Wow, really cool Kevin. What's the picture that looks like the surface of mars?

Just need to get it to record lat/long/altitude/heading/tilt/roll and you can put all of the pieces together :)
 
Lionclaw said:
Wow, really cool Kevin. What's the picture that looks like the surface of mars?
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Its the marsh that is on short final for KSQL (next to the SF bay)

Just need to get it to record lat/long/altitude/heading/tilt/roll and you can put all of the pieces together :)
Click to expand...

Yep - I'm planning on doing that at some point. lat/log/alt is already recorded based on the gps. heading could come from gps, tilt/roll feeds from the dynon into a little PC behind my panel.
 
cawmd82 said:
How does that happen? Sorry to be a total ludiite.....
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Currently it involves a fair amount of geek wisdom. The key is to sync the camera clock with the GPS, so the GPS tracklog events can be attached as some standardized picture metadata.

The camera portion of the software is here:

http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK

I run the following script to attach the GPS data to the pictures (in theory this could be done once every few weeks when the camera SD card is taken home):

find images -name \*.jpg > list.images
find tracklogs -name \*.gpx > list.tracklogs

# note the caption becomes the flickr description
# keywords becomes the flickr tags (comma separated)

./gpsPhoto.pl --timeoffset 0 --dir images --gpsdir tracklogs --gpsfile-list list.tracklogs --image-list list.images --credit "foo" --copyright "foo, 2009" --keywords aerial --caption testflight --maxtimediff 7200 --overwrite-geotagged
Click to expand...

After I get the process all worked out, it should be less gear headish.
 
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camera trigger

What triggers the camera to take each photo. Is that a feature of the camera or something external?
 
N91CZ said:
What triggers the camera to take each photo. Is that a feature of the camera or something external?
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The CHDK stuff is an 'alternate' open source set of software for canon cameras. It can run little scripts written in basic, so I wrote a script that does the following:

* Wait 10 mins after camera is turned on (to minimize the amount of wasted picts due to preflight, taxi etc...)
* Take a pict every 30 secs and put the camera back to sleep
 
Now that is extremely cool. I've been wanting a way to do time-lapse photography... I'll have to load up CHDK on our Canon SD1000 and check it out.

I see from their website that you can also trigger photos over the USB cable... that might be useful as well.

--Paul
 
kevinh said:
Yep - I'm planning on doing that at some point. lat/log/alt is already recorded based on the gps. heading could come from gps, tilt/roll feeds from the dynon into a little PC behind my panel.
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If you want to build a 3d model (Google Earth style) from your pics then checkout the opensource app VirtualPlanetBuilder. We use it at work for 3D synthetic terrain visualization. You'd have to normalize your pictures and couple them with USGS height map data, but it might be a worthwhile effort :) You'd have to spend time on weekly recon trips to fill all of the little holes.

Or maybe an even easier way... I think Google Earth lets you overlay images or raster maps. I'm not sure if it will skin it to the 3D terrain model though.
 
Kevin, you had better be careful, that picture of SLAC will have the Federalies knocking on your door asking national security questions. OK, how do I post a smiley face?
 
This is so cool, Kevin. Thanks for posting. I actually wrote some software to do the same thing. My intention wasn't to do periodic photos like you're doing, rather mine was just to geotag the photos so I can map all of the aerial photos I take on my trips. This is very neat stuff and is only the beginning.

BTW: If you use Dynon EFIS data logging it records lat/long/gps altitude if you have a gps being fed to it as well. Works well for geotagging. One of the cool things that I have my software do is tag the photo with the altitude/aispeed/heading data as well.

Unfortunately mine isn't ready for prime time (yet). I've been very busy at work lately and haven't had time to polish it up.
 
Reminded me of the Aerial Kite Photography guy.

Awesome, Kevin!

Fist thing I thought of when I saw your pictures was of the 'Aerial Kite Photography' website: http://arch.ced.berkeley.edu/kap/ (specifically the beach shots in in his gallery section: http://arch.ced.berkeley.edu/kap/gallery/gallery.html )

A wide angle lens and a few hundred miles of coastline flying would produce something an art gallery would want to exhibit! I think you're on to something!!!

b,
dr
 
Holy cool batman!

I like how your shadow was captured on the roof of the car dealership. My office is at 101 and Marsh Rd, if you ever think you're going to come overhead, give me some notice and I'll go do something stupid in the parking lot. :)
 
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Low cost spy plane

This is truly amazing. What cost billions to do 50 years ago, you can now just waltz on down to Walmart and do for pennies. Good work.
 
When you mount

When you mount the camera in the wing inspection plate - are you going to replace the plate with plexiglass and mount the camera behind it?

Maybe you're going to cut a hole in a "spare" inspection plate and let the camera lens poke through?

Either way-
Ultimately cool.... I want one too. :cool:
 
I like the last one! Kinda "abstract art with airplanes". Hey, Bill Cosby did it in the '80s with a couple of buckets of paint and a Mitsubishi Diamond, why can't an RVer do it?!
 
klovning said:
When you mount the camera in the wing inspection plate - are you going to replace the plate with plexiglass and mount the camera behind it?

Maybe you're going to cut a hole in a "spare" inspection plate and let the camera lens poke through?
Click to expand...

That's one of the reasons for my test. Surprisingly the wind doesn't seem to shake the lens around too much (the camera is only about 1/3" thick).

I'm going to mount the camera outside the wing in a little 2024 clip in carrier I've made - to make for easy camera removal/install. It won't be weather tight, so the camera will come off for bad weather.

The carrier will attach to the access plate screws.
 
Geotagging - great idea. Below are a few photos of my setup, which is mounted inside the R wing behind a plexi panel. All controlled from a laptop inside the cabin.

Additional wing ribs:

http://img190.imageshack.us/img190/3371/01extraribsforwingcamer.jpg


Camera mount. Tilts 30 degrees pitch and/or roll, driven by small servo motors from the cockpit (servos are not shown in this photo but you can see the camera mount and how it tilts).

http://img190.imageshack.us/img190/4105/01acameramount.jpg

Backing plate for the plexi window (milled Al):

http://img190.imageshack.us/img190/3566/02backingplateforcamera.jpg

Closer view:

http://img190.imageshack.us/img190/5103/03backingplateforcamera.jpg

Window in skin with plate attached:

http://img190.imageshack.us/img190/8034/04mountingplateforcamer.jpg

Cover plate that holds the plexi in place:

http://img192.imageshack.us/img192/6016/05coverplate.jpg

I'm still experimenting with all the settings, but currently use a Canon 12 mpxl camera that dumps to the laptop in the cockpit. I also get real-time images on the laptop through the viewfinder, and can control the zoom, focus, etc. from the laptop. I hope to post a complete description with more details sometime in the near future.

greg
 
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