Slashdot Mirror
$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...."
niggahz
fp???
Colonel Harland Sanders, born September 9, 1890, actively began franchising his
chicken business at the age of 65. Now, the Kentucky Fried Chicken® business he started
has grown to be one of the largest retail food service systems in the world. And Colonel
Sanders, a quick service restaurant pioneer, has become a symbol of entrepreneurial spirit.
More than two billion of the Colonel's "finger lickin' good" chicken dinners are served
annually. And not just in North America. The Colonel's cooking is available in more than
82 countries around the world. When the Colonel was six, his father died. His mother was
forced to go to work, and young. Harland had to take care of his threeyearold brother
and baby sister. This meant doing much of the family cooking. By the age of seven, he was
a master of a score of regional dishes. At age 10, he got his first job working on a nearby
farm for $2 a month. When he was 12, his mother remarried and he left his home near
Henryville, Ind., for a job on a farm in Greenwood, Ind. He held a series of jobs over the
next few years, first as a 15yearold streetcar conductor in New Albany, Ind., and then as
a 16yearold private, soldiering for six months in Cuba.
After that he was a railroad fireman, studied law by correspondence, practiced in justice
of the peace courts, sold insurance, operated an Ohio River steamboat ferry, sold tires, and
operated service stations. When he was 40, the Colonel began cooking for hungry travelers
who stopped at his service station in Corbin, Ky. He didn't have a restaurant then, but
served folks on his own dining table in the living quarters of his service station. As more
people started coming just for food, he moved across the street to a motel and restaurant
that seated 142 people. Over the next nine years, he perfected his secret blend of
11 herbs and spices and the basic cooking technique that is still used today. As we grew...
Sander's fame grew. Governor Ruby Laffoon made him a Kentucky Colonel in 1935 in
recognition of his contributions to the state's cuisine. And in 1939, his establishment was
first listed in Duncan Hines' "Adventures in Good Eating." In the early 1950s a new
interstate highway was planned to bypass the town of Corbin. Seeing an end to his
business, the Colonel auctioned off his operations. After paying his bills, he was
reduced to living on his $105 Social Security checks.
Confident of the quality of his fried chicken, the Colonel devoted himself to the chicken
franchising business that he started in 1952. He traveled across thecountry by car from
restaurant to restaurant, cooking batches of chicken for restaurant owners and their
employees. If the reaction was favorable, he entered into a handshake agreement on a deal
that stipulated a payment to him of a nickel for each chicken the restaurant sold. By 1964,
Colonel Sanders had more than 600 franchised outlets for his chicken in the United States
and Canada. That year, he sold his interest in the U.S. company for $2 million to a group of
investors including John Y. Brown Jr., who later was governor of Kentucky from 1980 to
1984. The Colonel remained a public spokesman for the company. In 1976, an independent
survey ranked the Colonel as the world's second most recognizable celebrity. Under the
new owners, Kentucky Fried Chicken Corporation grew rapidly. It went public on March 17, 1966, and was listed on the New York Stock Exchange on January 16, 1969. More than
3,500 franchised and companyowned restaurants were in worldwide operation when
Heublein Inc. acquired KFC Corporation on July 8, 1971, for $285 million.
Kentucky Fried Chicken became a subsidiary of R.J. Reynolds Industries, Inc. (now
RJRNabisco, Inc.), when Heublein Inc. was acquired by Reynolds in 1982. KFC was
acquired in October 1986 from RJR Nabisco, Inc. by PepsiCo, Inc., for approximately
$840 million. Colonel Sanders was always experimenting with food at his restaurant in
Corbin, Ky.,
Does the jizmonkey have a harry vagina?
I expect other networks do something similar with video networks.
In your situation, you could probably get better analysis data from a few static video cameras coupled with some image processing: you don't need to know exactly where every vehicle is all the time to carry out congestion analysis, for example. Since you mention "heavy traffic", the video data may already be available on tape, since you don't need to do this in real time, I assume.