$50 Aerial Digital Photography from a Balloon

jizmonkey writes "This guy built a balloon to take digital aerial photographs from thousands of feet up. It cost less than $50 altogether, including the image sensor, controller, and balloon. The circuit is surprisingly straightforward: just a hacked Vivitar minicamera, a 555 timer chip driving a relay through a voltage regulator, and a one-meter party balloon like the ones you see at used car dealerships. It just so happens that the entire circuit, strapped to a piece of a pizza box and tied to a really long string, is light enough to be lifted by the balloon. What could low-cost aerial photography be used for? I'm sure some people have some ideas...."

Comments

Impilcations and alternatives...

[mgcsinc]

Implications? An increased number of one-meter-balloon purchases and camera-raining-down-from-sky events in suburbia... Incidentally, you can get nice high-res aerial images of almost every major populated area in the US for just under the price tag of this rigged weather balloon: Keyhole's Earthviewer software and service, $49.95 a month... By all means, though, if it's an image from above of the new 2:1 scale Star Wars vessel you built in your backyard that you need and Keyhole's archived shots won't do it for you, be my guest and rig one of these babies up!

Planes...

[Romeozulu]

As a private pilot, I hope he keeps this thing below 1,000 feet.

Doesn't sound like as much fun...

[kzinti]

...as Kite Aerial Photography. Same idea, except you suspend the camera from a kite.

Re:Doesn't sound like as much fun...

[heli0]

Kites can lift a lot more weight and subsequently people are usign higher quality (SLR) cameras.

Here is a project camtroller to use a Parrallax Basic Stamp to control a digital camera on a kite.

More info here: rc-soar

FAA Regulations for Balloons.

[sglider]

A quick search on Google provided this link.

It reads as follows:

No person may operate an unmanned free balloon- (a) Unless otherwise authorized by ATC, in a control zone below 2,000 feet above the surface, or in an airport traffic area; (b) At any altitude where there are clouds or obscuring phenomena of more than five-tenths coverage; (c) At any altitude below 60,000 feet standard pressure altitude where the horizontal visibility is less than five miles; (d) During the first 1,000 feet of ascent, over a congested area of a city, town, or settlement or an open-air assembly of persons not associated with the operation; or (e) In such a manner that impact of the balloon, or part thereof including its payload, with the surface creates a hazard to persons or property not associated with the operation.

In english, it basically means that you are out of luck trying to get camera footage of anything if there is so much as a cloud in the sky.

REAAAAALLLLLY high balloon pics

[AmigaAvenger]

Or, for only two or three hundred more, you can get pictures from the edge of space on a balloon. We have gone to over 110k feet and recovered inexpensive film cameras, and have some incredible shots.

Photos

or

High Altitude Balloon Project

Here's some other examples using kites:

[Kheldar99]

William Freeman has a good page on his MIT AI lab homepage about doing the same thing except using kites to take pictures. (Btw, check out William T Freemans MIT e-mail address...)
http://www.ai.mit.edu/people/wtf/kite.html

And another link to a good site is Charles Benton's site.
http://www.arch.ced.berkeley.edu/kap/

Its interesting to note that there are lots of methos for creating unstructured panoramas. Where you have a set of images and the algorithm does its best to determine how to stick the images together to form a panorama. You could imagine a similar algorithm using these images to auotmatically create aerial maps... might make a good paper.

Re:Not a free balloon

[sglider]

Excellent point. The regulations for a Tethered balloon are:

(a) Except as provided in paragraph (b) of this section, no person may operate a moored balloon or kite- (1) Less than 500 feet from the base of any cloud; (2) More than 500 feet above the surface of the earth; (3) From an area where the ground visibility is less than three miles; or (4) Within five miles of the boundary of any airport. (b) Paragraph (a) of this section does not apply to the operation of a balloon or kite below the top of any structure and within 250 feet of it, if that shielded operation does not obscure any lighting on the structure.

This regulation is even worse, due to the limitation of 500 feet above ground. Again, thanks to Google and to these guys.

Re:"Dakota DIGITAL single-use camera," $11???

[heli0]

I think Walgreens beat them: Walgreen's single-use digital camera

"it's 'the only single use camera' with a delete button to let them retake shots"

Re:So...

[wideBlueSkies]

There's a guy who's been flying around the Oregon and California coastlines taking aerial shots and putting them on his website. It's actually quite nice. He has documented the entire California coast except for the restricted area around an Air Force base.

Goregeous photos.

And one can tell that he's put a lot of hard work into his project.

Here's the problem. Barbara's got her panties in a bunch because this guy's photos show exactly how to get to her secluded beachfront mansion. So she's trying to sue him for invasion of privacy or some such BS.

She seems to not know that any deranged fan who has her address could get directions to her house from Mapquest. Who knows, if she realized this, she'd probably sue them too.

Sorry, I don't have the project's URL handy.

wbs.