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Automated Wireless File Transfers?
Maskirovka asks: "I'm in the process of designing a helicopter mounted compact flash reader/transmitter package to upload photos to a fileserver upon landing, probably using 802.11g. It needs to be idiot proof (ie, plug a flashcard into it, and it'll upload automatically as soon as it gets in range of the basestation), and should weigh less than 5 pounds so as not to affect the aircraft weight and balance. It could probably be built around a Via EPIA board using a PCI WiFi card and riser, but that almost seems overkill for the one specific task. Is there a more efficient way to do this with off the shelf hardware?"
Is there a more efficient way to do this with off the shelf hardware?
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Get a wireless X-10 camera, and mount it on your helicoptor. Then a model-quality blonde who wears nothing other than bikinis will move in next door, digging out a pool in one doesn't yet exist, and spend her entire life lounging by the pool, moving only in order to keep herself centered in the lens of your camera.
It's all true, I saw it in a pop add. And another pop-up add, and another pop-up add, and then in a pop-up add.
<script language="ECMAScript"> window.open("http://www.x10.com/annoyingflashinga
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
What are you DOING?!
I can only imagine some sort of cloak and dagger digital image exchange with a gratuitous amount of trenchcoats.
Here's a quick suggestion
1) Get OpenBrick (www.openbrick.org)
2) Install Linux w/ ftp server
3) Use heartbeat to monitor your box on board
4) when available, copy data from OpenBrick with either ftpcopy or mirroring software of your choice
5) ???
6) Profit
Can I get an eye poke?
Dog House Forum
Try using a charcoal pencil and a sketch pad.
Just before landing fold the image into the traditional paper aeroplane shape.
As you approach the base station launch the image.
The pilot may have to do some tricky flying to direct the rotor wash so that the image reaches the base station.
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
You could get a Soekris 4501 or other box from www.soekris.com, strip it down to just board, find a way to power the board. All the specs for the boards are located on Soekris' site.
From there, you could create a script that listens for when you put a CF card in. Don't ask me how to do that, I don't know a lick of any type of program language, scritping language, or just plain language.
I was going to do almost exactly this except without the airplane part.
My plan was to use a Terapan
Mine tethered to a digital SLR with the Terapan set up as the USB master
and the SLR as the slave.
Then I would stick a wifi card in the mine and program it to continuously
download the files from the DSLR and ftp them to my server when it could.
#!/usr/local/bin/ksh /CFmountpoint/imagedir ]];then /CFmountpoint/imagedir/ <server>:imagedir/
while true
do
if [[ -x
server=$(nslookup <serverName>)
if [[ $server = *<serverIP>* ]];then
rsync -e ssh -az
fi
fi
sleep 60
done
anything else?
Be ot or bot ne ot, taht is the nestquoi.
... it could be uploading photos the moment a radio signal is established, as opposed to waiting for a grunt to hook up a cable.
Pretty slick!
Kinda curious if you've considered using a PocketPC for that. Just plug the CF card into the PocketPc that already has 802.11 going, then write a simple little app that handles the transfer bit. That'll get you into the 5lb mark, and there's no moving parts to break. The downside is that may be a little pricier than you have in mind. The plus side is that it turns on instantly and has its own display etc.
Use Rendezvous. Rendezvous can fire a callback when a service becomes available. The POSIX implementation of Rendezvous is free for download from Apple.
iPaq + linux + CF reader + 802.11g card + 20 minutes persuading the compsci major to write you an app + cron job for this = success!
i'm sure you could have equal luck with a palm pilot of sorts if you worked at it hard enough.
moox. for a new generation.
you can get a PDA with a CF wifi card for $200.
Remove unnecessary parts and it should be under
200 grams. Trick is: Your video cam is recording
to flash, and you want the flash connected to the
pda's flash adapter when it comes in range.
To do this, control SCRs from the serial port
of the PDA, to switch connections. uCLinux might
be helpful if you dislike PalmOS code.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
1. Have some obscure technical business idea.
2. Ask gullible/nice slashd^H^H^H^H^H^H free consultants to do the hard part for you.
3. Profit!!!!!
Marxist evolution is just N generations away!
I will give you the answer after you make a wireless fund transfer to my swiss bank account.
#!/bin/bash /dev/sda1 /mnt/complactflash /mnt/complactflash /mnt/compactflash/* userid@whatever:~/filesfromhelicopter
mount -t vfat
cp -R ~/whateverdata
scp
Then you can make it executable, chmod +x script.sh
then just get some gui to launch it by makeing a icon for it, so you can just double click it. And just make sure you save everything to ~/whateverdata
keanmarine.com
Assuming you are taking photos while in the air, why bother removing the compact flash card at all or mounting anything inside the helicoptor? Use the Nikon D2H for taking your pictures and add on the WT-1A wireless transmitter. You'll need to be patient though, as the products have been announced, but not yet released. It uses FTP over 802.11b to transfer the images.
The key part about this is that it seems like a kind of surveillance ops situation in which the person is taking pictures that shouldn't be transmitted to others except when they land in a secured area.
I think in order to do this you're going to need to switches, one on the base of the helicopter (which becomes depressed upon landing) and the other inside for verification. That way you aren't trying to transmit in an emergency landing situation. While I'm not a programmer, you should be able to use those as I/O triggers for a piece of software running resident on the system to attempt to transmit as soon as you land.
Then you may want a verification piece in the software to confirm receipt before erasing what's on your camera.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. - G.B. Shaw
I give my passengers a digital camera to use during the 90 minute flight.
Upon disembarking, it is nice to have them be able to pick up the photos that they took or better yet take a CD home.
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
Your project sounds very similar in needs to another application I'd discussed with a friend some time ago. When the Civil Air Patrol gets called out on a search-and-rescue mission, they frequently fly over the suspected area with a video camera, sending frames down to the ground with slow-scan TV so that an expert on the ground can identify likely spots to search. The image quality sucks and the data rate is worse.
:)
It'd be nice if these folks could carry a multi-megapixel digicam on the plane, snap pics of anything interesting, and have the images sent to the ground for viewing/zooming on a laptop. The only trouble is, the search area is usually several miles on a side, well over the range of normal 802.11a/b. The solution we came up with involves a cadet on the ground with a high-gain dish antenna being told "keep this pointed at that plane". Cheaper and more reliable than an automatic antenna tracker, for sure.
So what we need here is a way to interface with the digital camera. As soon as a photo is taken, we should suck it of the camera's memory and buffer it for transmission to the ground station as soon as possible. Point to ponder: Assume that wireless connectivity is intermittent. Do you transmit the most recent pictures first, or the oldest pictures first, to make sure the base station has the most useful data possible? (LIFO or FIFO?)
Some time ago, I proposed a bluetooth CF module which would appear as a large FAT filesystem. It would have a limited amount of "cache" memory, where images would immediately be written, and then it would then link to a large hard drive sitting in the user's pocket and free the cache for more images. An 802.11b version would suck more battery than bluetooth, but allow longer range operation. The trick isto emulate a filesystem, so firmware hacks aren't needed. (If you could mess with the camera's firmware, you could use an existing CF wireless card and let the camera handle the protocol, right?) Nikon seems to have released a similar product but it's vaporware and only works with one particular camera.
In lieu of sitting straight in the camera's media slot, there's always software that controls the camera via serial or USB. The problem is, most of it seems designed for interactive use. I don't know whether the protocols support lurking in the background to just suck files off the flash card, without interfering with the camera's normal operation. Several of the packages are based on a common code base with a protocol that's fairly well documented, so rolling your own isn't out of the question. Let's assume for the sake of discussion that your camera supports this and suitable software can be found or written.
If you can get by on RS232's peak speed of 115200bps, and if the software can be worked out, there are several hardware options. Several other posters have suggested PDAs with wireless cards. That's a great idea, especially if you can strip off the screen and case to save weight. Some suggested the Soekris net4511 or similar. It's got a low-power 486 chip, serial ports, ethernet ports, and a PCMCIA slot for your wireless card. Or, you could hack up an existing 802.11b accesspoint to run linux and use its console port to connect to the camera. (Note: The Eumitcom-based APs are getting hard to find now. Not a platform with future potential.) There's a similar project for the Apple Airport base station, but it's limited to etherbooting, probably not suitable for this application.
You could use a pair of Ricochet modems dialed to each other (auto-answer on the chopper, and dial from the ground), in which case they simp
Is this just a way to send the data or does the helicopter take the pictures?
You are not very clear beacause you are talking about a reader.
You could build a system with say an ez80 or AVR chip that has a memory card reader, memory card emulator and network connection.
You would plug the memory card into your device. Then your device into your camera. The network connection goes to a small AP. Then add the software.
You would have to have an electronc way to swap the memory card but that would not be too dificult to do.
No need to carry a Linux system on the chopper just to download pics.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.