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Build Your Own KiteCam
wally writes "Paul Mutton successfully managed to kill an expensive digital camera taking aerial photos using a kite, parcel tape and some bubble wrap. The geek explains the ups and downs (excuse the pun) of his attempt to take some aerial photographs with a friend using a Casio EX-Z3 digital camera attached to a kite in good ol' Blue Peter style bubble wrap and parcel tape. Paul did however manage to take 2 or 3 pretty photos of Kent University before his precious camera speed to the ground at a speed with enough force to render it quite unusable. Out of bits left intact was the flash card and a 30 second clip leading up to the crash. Remember children: Don't try this at home!"
Just fit the camera with a parachute, and you're sorted ;) Not using a really expensive camera would also probably be top of the list :P
Will it beat my honda hybrid
Wait, did you mean the kite or the server?
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
I hate to be a dick, but I'm not going to donate money to this guy's "camera fund". If it had been stolen or something, that might generate some sympathy - but the dude damaged his own camera in an idiotic "Tim the Tool-Man Taylor" sort of way... Next time... well... don't do that.
(and I won't grouse about my week old rejected submission either.)
Go look up Kite Aerial Photography on google, and check out this guy's 3-d panoramas:
http://scotthaefner.com/kap/360panos/
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
I had the same idea few years back,but dismissed it ,coz ididnt know how the kite could sustain the weight of the camera.
Am glad someone atleast got 3 pics.
Perhaps, a hobby aeroplane would be better suited for this purpose of aerial photography-bu then it is expensive.:-(
Why does yahoo do this
Blue Peter style is stickyback plastic and sellotape, not bubblewrap,
perhaps they should teach more observation skills
Have he used a $5 disposable film-based camera and donated $300 to aid the poor of Africa have some food?
its amazing how many beggars, tramps and poor people line the streets on the Internet
I haven't seen the video yet, but judging by the summary, I half expect to catch a glimpse of Charlie Brown on the other end of that string...
My brother had strapped a cheap digital camera to a remote control airplane and took some pictures. Simply incredible what he did with that. He also got some great crash footage that was priceless. :)
I crashed my kite rig once too. I think it's kind of a rite of passage in the hobby. Lots of things can go wrong. This crash cost about $1 per foot fallen for the camera repair luckily. The camera was a Canon Powershot G2.
/. article about it. Unfortunately, I haven't had a lot of time to get out and do it for about a year, but I'm not done by far :)
This has been a really fun hobby. I got into it after seeing a very old
BTW to the person who submitted about the 360deg aerials, I have made one as well. They are pretty difficult to get right, but they are singlehandedly the most awesome photos I have ever been able to take on a fairly shoestring photography budget.
More of my KAP stuff here for those curious.
On first look, I read that as "Build your own kittycam". I began to wonder what kind of monster image stabilization system you would need to couteract a pissed off bundle of fur and claws spinning at 120rpm.
Just 2 comments (at +2) and the server is already dead. A new record? Anyway....
Why use such an expensive camera? There's loads of R/C airplane pilots taking aerial pictures, now that the price for a decent digital camera has dropped. These days, a nice 2-3 megapixel cheapo camera will cost less than the radio gear in a typical plane. Use that rather than one that costs 300 pounds.
So... I won't be contributing to his fund for a new camera. As any aeromodeller will confirm, crashing is part of the hobby.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
He would have been too busy looking down ladies' bossoms to even care about electricity
Shouldn't this story be titled "How to crash your home built KiteCam" or at least "how to use slashdot to crash your webserver in 3 easy steps".
Here is the full article from their page before it gets /.'ed.
The Day I Broke My Camera
One sunny day, a friend of mine had this crazy idea of sending a camera up on my kite to take some aerial photos. He was unwilling to use his camera, so I foolishly used my own. The end result was that I broke my digital camera worth over 300. If you're thinking of trying something similar, this story may make you think about planning it a bit better than we did.
The Kite
The kite we used was a Flexifoil Super 10. This has a parachute-like appearance and has a span of 10ft. It would have no trouble lifting most cameras, although if it gets too windy, it pulls very hard and it's difficult to stand still.
The Camera
My camera is (was?) a Casio EX-Z3. This is a very small and light digital camera that seemed suitable for airborne photography. It is capable of taking a sequence of three photos after a ten second delay, which gives plenty of time for the kite to get into its highest position from a standing launch. Andy was kindly responsible for pressing the shutter button and launching the kite while I held the control lines. It was also his idea to do this in the first place. Perhaps I shouldn't have listened to him!
Protecting the Camera
Obviously, my main concern was that I'd paid over 300 for the camera and I didn't want to break it. I put on my Blue Peter hat and cunningly crafted a fine blend of bubblewrap, toilet roll and parcel tape. The idea was that even if the camera fell from a great height, the camera would be safe. Maybe I should have used more bubblewrap...
Testing the Camera Protection
I slotted the camera into its impromptu bubblewrap casing and it looked like it felt at home. Elastic bands and some string kept it from falling out. I tested it out by throwing it around the room while it counted down from ten and took some photos. The lens was able to get a good, unobscured view courtesy of my patented Toilet Roll/Bubblewrap Hybrid Lens Protection System (TM). (That's a joke, by the way, in case someone else has already patented it...)
Weather Conditions
We were getting excited, because the wind looked a lot better than it had the day before. There seemed to be enough, but not too much. It was a very hot day! Towards the end of the aerial photography session, the wind died down a bit and it became increasingly difficult to fly.
The First Flight!
The first flight was quite successful, but in the bright sun it was difficult to see how well the photos had come out. The only way of attaching the camera to the Flexifoil was to suspend it on a 10ft piece of string between each end of the carbon fibre leading edge spar, so I was a bit worried about how "steady" the camera would be during flight. It did seem to wobble about quite a bit (particularly when I performed a few loops) but it was a lovely bright day, so the exposure time was pretty short.
Taking More Photos
The bubblewrap casing seemed to be doing a good job of protecting the camera. None of the landings had been particularly heavy so far, so we sent the kite up a few more times to take some more photos. The next photo shows Eliot College at the University of Kent. The pointy building in the distance is the Electronics lab. You can also see The Venue, Keynes College and Beckett Court in this photo.
Taking Even More Photos
It was a bit of a gamble taking the photos. Some of them were just bits of grass and most were taken at weird angles. But we carried on taking a few more before moving on to taking some short video clips.
Pushing the Envelope
While we were trying to take the video clips, the wind had died down to a level that made it almost impossible to control the kite. However, every now and then, a gust of wind would come along that made it possible to launch the kite and camera combo. During one particularly gusty session, the wind seemed to totally disappear and the kite ended up facing towards th
This account has been seized by the GNAA. That is all.
What guts he has to ask like that!Childish too.Iam surprised how he got that 7.6 pounds even(his guilty friend must hav given it).
What is the probability that someone will donate him????Zero?
if any of you consider donating,donateto CRY
Why does yahoo do this
they are more stable and less subject to
sudden losses of altitute.
A few minutes of SlashDot fame...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I see a similarity here - no matter how much you spend on bubble wrap - if you drop it from high enough, it WILL break.
Hmm... 3Mb AVI * 100k Downloads = Uhoh (Not to mention the page views.)
:)
I hope his ISP doesn't charge too much.
I can just see the net loss of this whole endeavor sky rocketing further. I hope it wasn't his "friend" who submitted this one.
Don't see what all the fuss is about: Charlie Benton has been doing it for years....only thing is, he hasn't been wrecking 'em.
--<Mike>--
I have invented the SlashCam, an open source project that acts as a plug-in to Slashdot that allows the viewers to see (in real time!)your server go down in flames seconds after an article containing your address is posted!
l as hcam
http://sourceforge.net/projects/microsoft/iis/s
There are several pretty good, really cheap cameras out there that take decent pictures and don't weigh a lot that would work better in this application.
For example, the AIPTek Pencam 1.3 weighs 2.4oz and takes 1.3MP pictures. The imager is CMOS (rather than CCD) and so the pictures are sensitive to the lighting, but they usually come out pretty good. AIPTek also makes several other models that work well. You can buy them at Circuit City and Walmart and if you hit the sales right, you can buy one for $50.
The Mustek Mini 3 is also very light and takes pretty good pictures and can be purchased for less than $100.
A good resource for aerial photography - although aimed at R/C airplane aerial photography - is the aerial photography forum at RCGroups.Com. Check out the thread at the top labelled "Digital Cameras under 5oz for aerial photography".
For triggering, you could rig an R/C servo to the switch, or use some form of PIC circuit to trigger it on a timed basis. Some projects like this are listed here.
First, instead of using a cheap, decent camera that could be deemed 'expendable,' he used his good camera.
:)"
Secondly, look at this quote from the page: "Here's an AVI video of the very last flight my camera made. Unfortunately, it was limited to 30 seconds in duration, so you don't get to see the actual impact. I did a number of loops, so be prepared to get dizzy
LOOPS? What kind of fucking imbecile does aerobatics with a kite to which his expensive digital camera is attached? That's just begging for trouble!
And to top it all off he has the gall to ask for donations to replace his destroyed-through-stupidity camera. Don't anyone give him a cent.
I've looked around on Google for info about building an actual digital camera but came up with nothing. Wouldn't it be cool to build an extremely minimal digital camera that could survive a kite crash? Building a digital camera from scratch seems daunting, but what about cannibalizing a low-priced camera, removing nonessential parts? Anybody done anything like this?
One of things I've learned about kites in my life is that they tend to hit the ground at blistering speeds with alarming frequency. I've toyed with the idea of trying something along these lines with a digital camera, except I always planned on using a balloon filled with Helium with a string running back to the ground. This way, if the wind changes suddenly, its not going to slam the kite into the ground from an altitude of several hundred feet. Still, you have the danger of the string breaking, but in this case, you can include on your balloon probe a small form factor motherboard, a cellphone modem card, a GPS receiver and an RS-232 interfaced control valve to bleed the helium. This way, if it gets away, you can call it, ask it where it is and tell it to land.
Unknown host pong.
I can't seem to open the AVI file -- what codec is used for the video?
If you think Kite photos are cool, check out some of the pix taken by RC heli pilots with their rigs:
Pictures here
You crazy man? You piss off supahfly!
I gotta ask - isn't this the sort of thing those damn X10 cameras would be good for? A kite can't be too far out of range of the wireless camera and a good laptop.
What's the resolution on those things anyway. I was so annoyed by their advertising schemes that I forgot that they might possibly be useful in some way.
"Bah!" - Dogbert
I don't mean to shill for my university, but I am a graduate student in the physical sciences at Emporia State University, where we have a Geospatial Analysis program. One of our professors is heavily into KAP (Kite Aerial Photography) and other SFAP (Small Format Aerial Photography) including anchored baloons and more conventional planes and helicopters.
We generally use both color film and color-infrared, and have begun to use some digital. The hard part (aside from not crashing the kite) is the image processing. We use ground markers and GPS units to determine some reference points, and use Idrisi software to do a rubber-sheet transform on the image. We then use the same software to stitch the images together and do more detailed analysis (color channel seperation, specialized boolean operations, etc.).
Using color and infrared images, we can make high-resolution images similar to the comparitively low-resolution satellite (see: Landsat) images. Through the analysis, we can identify land usage, soil moisture, vegetation types, vegetation/crop health, and many other factors.
Now the fun part: if you like science, we have graduate and undergraduate programs in the physical sciences department where you can specialize in Geospatial Analysis. The other best part--you can do it on-line if you wish.
See The Emporia State University GSA homepage or the Physical Sciences homepage for more information.
And we're not the only university that has such programs--do a search for "Geographic Information Systems site:.edu" or "Geospatial Analysis" and you'll find several more.
(I don't consider this too much of an ad, because anyone who thinks the kite photography is cool should see that there are education opportunities and careers to be made that involve this kind of work.)
If you're interested in either learning to take great aerial photographs with a kite, or else just seeing a bunch of terrific images, Charles Benton's KAP site is the place to go.
Benton is a professor of architecture at UC Berkeley. Living in northern California, he's got no end of interesting places to photograph. And I think his photography is probably aided by his architectural training and a strong ability to imagine what a shot will look like even though he's not looking directly through the camera.
It's absolutley worth checking out.
back in the 1930's. he used a box kite and a piece of ice, which would melt and trigger the shutter on the camera.
Wouldn't getting a disposible digital camera have been a better plan? They're pretty cheap and I think even Wal*Mart sells them. And, if I've remember correctly, /. even had a story about some guys who made them reusable.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
Do they always post all of the popular science magazine articles in here? This was in this months issue. Just curious.
Wherever you go, there you are.
High Power Rocketry folks have known for years that the probability of a successful flight is inversely proportional to the cost of the payload divided by the average cost of payloads being flown. For many years, expensive video cameras ensured failure.
It's only been through the addition of multiple onboard altimeters, accelerometers, computers, amateur radio transmitters, GPS units, rocket locators, and other horrendously expensive gizmos that lone video cameras are now fairly easy to fly.
BTW: There's a fun traditions if you are launching an on-board computer running Windows. If the flight fails, you call Microsoft Support and report that your computer crashed.
Of course, if you were running Linux, maybe it wouldn't have crashed....
This sig seemed like a good idea at the time....
IIRC, Scientific American had an article a few years back about how to make a stable kite cam with a disposible (read: invincible) camera. Here's a link, but it costs $$$.
Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
Google's cache for those who can't access the site.
Here's a mirror of the page with pictures and the ~3MB video:
a m/
http://personalpages.bellsouth.net/s/a/sanv/kitec
"I filter at +6, and have yet to miss out on an important comment." (#822545)
He used a Flexifoil? Then the guy is simply an idiot.
/. story. Must be a light news day.
I've been flying multi line kits for almost twenty years. A Flexi is a fast moving kite two-line with tons of pull. I have three ten footers, and even in a light wind ONE is enough to work my arms out. In 15 mph + it will drag me down the beach.
Flexifoils are commonly used in buggying and speed and pull are the reason they are used.
In light winds I've stacked the three ten footers and they literally lifted my 175 pounds right off the ground like a bug.
Kite cams are nothing new...we were doing kite photography in the 80's. But we would NEVER have used a Flexi for that, Kite cams are best on single line kites, perhaps a large delta.
I don't donate to people who use the wrong equipment for something that was done much better 15 years ago.
Seems a little loose for a
Visit Steve Winwood's site for free music and video!
"The pie shall be cut in half and each man shall receive.....death. I'll eat the pie."
A real nerd would build and launch his own satellite camera rig. Then when it crashed he would launch a global appeal fund to rebuild downtown LA.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
If you want to try this at home, think of a better excuse than "But aerial photography is cool" when FBI officials start asking you who did you make the photos for.
Don't overestimate the resilience of digital cameras. I trashed my Nikon Coolpix 950 simply by dropping it four feet onto a thich rug carpet while it was switched on... the batteries popped out, and the lens drive motor system was frazzled (every time I switch it on, the motor can only go in one direction). So far, I haven't found any camera shop willing to to the repairs.
Ironically this camera survived three years after a tumble down rocky hill.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Reminds me of the egg-dropping contest they had one year at the University of Arkansas. Design a container that will protect several eggs (3?) from breakage after a several-story fall. You must be able to open, reclose, and relaunch the container within yea-many seconds. Dimensions are limited to X by Y by Z.
It ran in several rounds, each round from a higher floor. The ultimate winner didn't depend on padding at all; he used an otherwise empty box that had egg cups strung on shock cord suspended in the middle. Maximum volume + minimum mass = minimum impact velocity.
Next time, maybe a box kite instead of a wing, with the camera shock-corded in the center?
I figure by 2030 or so my 6-digit UID will be something to brag about.
Game Boy Kite Aerial Photography
According to Netcraft, the site is hosted by NotNet Ltd.
http://www.notnet.co.uk.
They have several hosting-schemes: 1, 2, 4, 8 and 20 GB transfer per month, with additional bandwidth for 5 GB-pounds per month per GB or 20 GBP for 5 GB...
The domain itself responds with a errorcode 500 now...
But at least, the hosting-provider is up-front about not offering any kind of "unlimited" hosting-schemes...
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
Or is that too easy to be considered "geek" worthy (or maybe wind is a factor?).
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
Maybe this guy needs to setup a fund for his server.
This technique (tie camera to kite, tie kite to hand) was used to do some interesting image based modeling work by Paul Debevec, he flew his kite around the UC Berkley campus then later used the images to reconstruct 3D models of various buildings. Check it out: Paul Debevec's Campanile Movie.
I always thought about making some helium balloon setup so that the camera could fly a lot higher. The problem is, getting the pictures back. You'd have to follow the balloon until it came down or have a really good wireless connection. But that wouldn't be cost effective.
There was another guy who had a kite cam page on the net, he didn't get his kite very high though.
We should have done this for our kite we built http://www.wallyx.com/k/index.html
I was at Kent from 89 to 93. I was at Darwin college myself. From your pictures I gather you're at Eliot. I remember it used to smell funny at the Eliot bar, sort of sweet, burning grass smell. Don't know what it was, but people were all red-eyed, talking funny.
You didn't go to the bar before flying your Kite now, did you?
So it fell 960 feet?
32 (feet/s) X 30s = 960 feet
That would be "really hard" as he said.
Shooting at Kent State? That's so passé.
It may be a good idea to spend a bit extra for a warranty like this if you're doing this kind of photography.
If you do wish to take the risk and mount a camera on a kite, it would be best to build a small parachute that attaches to the camera. Unless it's really big, it won't bring the camera down slowly, but if made correctly, it might slow it down just enough that the camera will still function. If it falls on something soft, that is.
This post is not to be taken as medical advice, legal advice, financial advice, or any other kind of advice, now known or later developed, nor is the reader intended to rely on its contents. This post is provided on an as-is basis, with no warranty, expressed or implied, blah blah blah.
ahhh, I got it while on dial-up :), looks like it hit a bit of turbulence..
Yeah, I tied my Ferrari Enzo to a kite, and it was damaged beyond repair. I need approx $1 million, to donate to the KiteFerrari Disaster Fund, send your blank cheques to...
The guys an idiot who did something stupid and now he expects everyone else to give him money so he can do it again.
Cheap rigs like this are easy to build and don't wreck cameras. Trust me, I've put plenty of them down hard.
I read about Ghandi the other day. There are a lot of things people don't realize about Ghandi. He went around barefoot, so he had really tough feet. Otherwise, he was pretty frail, because he didn't eat much, and what he did eat gave him bad breath...which made him a super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.
You see? Please try to do better next time.
Here, the guy put up mirrors of the videos. (the link on the main page article is 404 now.)
This is just like dropping the eggs off of a school roof in science class. Obviously packing tape and bubble wrap is not a good cushion! He should have experimented to find a MUCH safer way for the camera to return to the ground first. I hope whenever he gets a new camera he thinks of a different enclosure for it.
"The geek explains the ups and downs (excuse the pun) of his attempt to take some aerial photographs with a friend" Remember Friends don't let friends drive! A geek is someone that uses their field for productivity or pleasure, and has accumulated - through a desire to enjoy their experience more or become more proficient at a task. Definatley not a geek... A Nerd is someone that has taken their use of a tool or discipline and raised it so that they no longer value the result of it more than the tool or discipline itself. Bingo! "taken their use of a rather-expensive-camera and raised it, so that they no longer value the result of it, more than the tool or discipline itself...." Ailbeit the lower-form of nerd :)
"Remember children: Don't try this at home!"
Don't worry, we won't, Children...:P
...then what did they use to get a picture of it?
My wife scoffs at my many-hundred dollar several-year-old 1 (count 'em 1) megapixel camera with lousy color balance. And she blythely uses her disposable Fuji camera for all her snaps.
I think the idea of using a kit to do some aerial photos sounds like a fun hack. I have donated $10 to the lad in this story because I've done stupid stuff, too.
And I think my donation should cover the purchase of a replacement DISPOSABLE film camera for him to loft in subsequent experiments. Maybe replace the bubble-wrap with light-tight gaffer's tape. Think appropriate technology.
I met an engineer from Jaguar when I worked for a company building CAD software. He was suitably pleased with the cool things we did, but admitted that sometimes the most appropriate thing when you wanted to know how a few bits would work together was to mock up something with stiff paper and tacks: Cardboard-Aided Design.
I had exactly the same problem - a physics project designed to lift about 200g of sensor to 200m to measure the "Astronomical Seeing" (in ideally low wind!).
l ta.htm
Anyway, our first attempt (wuth dummy load!) was with a Parafoil, sparless 'Pokite' of 2m span. Despite the advice of the kite shop, this was a disaster. It's uncontrollable, oscillates wildly from side to side, flies at a very low angle (25degrees?) on the line, so is poor for gaining height, and worst of all, if the wind ever drops, the kite folds up like a plastic bag with a brick in it, never to recover its unstalled condition.
The second attempt was with a "Megadelta" 3m span Delta kite (with spars). This is perfect for the job: it is very very stable, flies in extremely low wind, stay at an angle of about 75 degrees or higher, and will descend very gently if the wind fails. In fact, in a total flat calm, one can gently reel in the kite on the string, keeping enough forward speed that the kite can be gently flown back to my hand! Liftoff is possible by running, even in windless conditions. (The only problem: in strong winds, it can take 2 people to get it down - the string is rated 1 kNewton for a reason!) We had much observing success with the kite, and I'd highly recommend it. The kite concerned is made by "Skybums" - and there is a photo here (not my website):
http://www.nitrobug.freeserve.co.uk/de
Why didn't this guy or for that matter anyone else who wants to do something stupid with a digital camera just go buy a cheap one? Instead of detroying a $600 camera why not destroy a $90 Kodak CX6200? It is not like the CX6200 is hard to find, many local and online retailers carry at the price of $90. The fact that the CX6200 is a fixed focus camera with no optical zoom is not a disadvantage at these heights or in most applications similar to this.
Impersonating Tycho from Penny Arcade since before there was a PA.
Listen, Google, if there's anything we learned from the KiteCam Disaster Fund page, it's that nerds are better off without kites.
Oh, I thought you said kike-cam.
if he built and put a lightweight server on a kite, and it survived a slashdotting instead of a fall
;-)
and no, i'm not thinking about a wireless server.... this is a kite after all
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
This has been covered twice on /. before. December 2003 and November 2002
"You might as well get your son a ticket to hell as give him a five string banjo." -unknown minister
At first I read it as, "Build your own kitchen", which is my next around-the-house project.
Terrist. The FBI should be arriving at this door shortly.
I've used cellular comm. from a small airplane numerous times without any problems. I think you overestimate the height and gain of those antennaes.
Bar-room bores and opiniated halfwits.
Well, not with a kite, but with a RC Plane and an El-cheapo camera.
Okay, I did crash into a building, but I'm no terrorist, and it did not inflict damage to people, plane nor camera.
Video here: http://rolf.qt-developer.org/video/flight1.mpg
I've got photos and some howto info from early attempts to my latest flights last weekend here: http://3cats.us/gallery/KAP
My problem is I keep loosing the kites, not the cameras...
- Mike