Slashdot Mirror
Tagging Photos With GPS Coordinates
ptorrone writes "As part of a camera mod project to make a low-cost aerial photography device we started finding other uses for the camera hack. This first part of this series is tagging photos with GPS coordinates by automating a camera and GPS unit, it's a DIY Black Box for now with interesting applications and other uses. Ideally, this may encourage the next EXIF data schema to support GPS and other information."
This would be great if it also tagged the direction of the photo as well as the focal length.
That way some sort of virtual vacation wiki could be constructed from it.
It would also be nice to get altitude and the direction (in 3-D) the picture was taken.
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
Would be helpful for this http://www.confluence.org/
But instead of a specific data source (the GPS unit), why not develop a standard and just have a data plug in the side of the cam to plug *whatever* data source into? GPS, keyboard, clock, speedometer, altimeter, whatever ...
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I'd love to see this kind of thing built into cameras in the same way that Kodak is known to symbolically code film they sell to indicate the manufacture date of the film.
High resolution? No need for that... it's just a nice little trap for people trying to say a staged photo proves something that it really doesn't. If the original film indicates a year after the date you're claiming or that you were nowhere near the place you claim the photo was taken, then you're a liar and we can forget everything you had to say...
I don't know if anyone remembers this, but there was a series of stories on Slashdot about a guy that was taking high-quality photos of the California coastline to study erosion. He was sued by Barbra Streissand or someone for taking photos of her house. Anyway, his camera system recorded the location that the photos were taken using GPS. You should talk to him to see what he did.
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
It worked well, but I was not able to get altitude nor direction data, I plan on the future hooking up two servos to allow for directional and azumuth data to be entered as well.
[blue] - The Ministry of Information approved this message...
While new cameras offer GPS hookups, I imagine compatibility and logistics is a hassle.
Sometime, there'll be GPS in the camera, but then you have to take pictures with the camera itself in a position to receive GPS signal, and the long camera wakeup times will be even longer.
K I S S. Use a GPS that can be enhanced and specialized. Use a camera that is made for taking pictures. Correlate the data as convenient.
[
This would be really slick for storm-chasing. Often times you find yourself in the middle of [some flat state] taking pictures of a storm, and once you go home you may very well forget exactly where you were.
Also, I recently saw a TV show where they had to track down a killer based off of some digital pictures a murder victim had snapped shortly before getting killed. This technology would have made that murder much easier to solve... of course this probably has never happened in real life.
The biggest problem I see with GPS and cameras [digital] right now is battery life. Get GPS fixes from the necessary satellites can really run down your batteries fast. This is one area where camera phone may have a advantage; if they are GPS enabled (i.e. motorla iDen, etc.) and can use AGPS from the phone network, it may help with battery life. Nevertheless, as GPS receivers become more efficient, I can see them being integerated in to cameras to provide this type of information. It would actually make for a great vacation application. Take photos with GPS coords, upload photos to computer, computer has an app that "maps" your photos to where they were taken on a global/regional map. Throw in the dates and the app could construct a trip timelime showing all the locations where you took your photos (all the while playing the Family Vacation theme song).
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
Imagine thousands of Flightgear fans all taking pictures from hilltops and airplanes and submitting them to a server that performs geometric transformations on the images, per the location data, and adds to a downloadable database of free scenery.
It was great for crime photos, surveying, construction, etc. IIRC they had a snap on module later.
a l/tib/tib7061.jhtml?id=0.1.14.34.5.110&lc=en
http://www.kodak.com/global/en/service/profession
They seem to hava abandoned it. Silly to do for such a simple and useful feature. Hope the new project takes off.
Firefox &
During my last motorcycle trip (http://photos.innersource.com/group/9976) all photos were GPS tagged and afterwards linked to satellite images/maps (http://maps.innersource.com/) While a manual process today, it would be fairly easy to automate it.
My smartphone does E911, so it's got a minimal GPS receiver that can receive the raw GPS signal data at the time it snaps a picture. I'd love an app that added those coordinates to the JPG comment field, then sent them over its CDMA net connection for locating by higher-powered software at the server.
--
make install -not war
Didn't Microsoft already patent this? The patent mentions GPS data.
Hate to be a "been there... done that" type but my Nikon Coolpix 950 has done that for years. If a GPS putting out NMEA is attached to the serial port it places that last lat/lon/alt in the EXIF data.
:}
Works great... and has for several years
Telcos have alot of dark fibre in the States. Most people assume that's optical fibre...but it's actually moral fibre.
It was a 2002 Toshiba model with au/KDDI service. I could tag any photo with the GPS coordinates and mail it off to let people know where I was. It's nice to look back at old shots and be able to find the location on a map, but I'm sure it can be used for many more practical purposes.
Check this out: http://www.redhensystems.com/products/multimedia_m apping_software/mediamapper/default.asp?sm=2
It records GPS coordinates to a video after it is encoded as sound. While playing it back, it deciphers the sound to obtain GPS coordinates, and geo-references entire video to a basemap as it was recorded.
Currently, you can get an rss feed for certain tags on publicly available photos. It would be interesting if they extended this feature for GPS coordinates. (ie, if you want to see what's going on in Central Park, at your college, at Mt Everest, or at Mardi Gras.)
... In summary; more meta-data = cooler searches.
e ?tags=decay&format=rss_200
...Computer generated images would need fake GPS coordinates, NASA would need some other form of GPS for space...
It also would make for some interesting searches. In theory, if they kept track of points, vectors, and times... and lets say that you kept track of the same info, then you could search for all photos that include you!! Also, depending on if they store other meta-data, sorta like ID3 tags for MP3s, you could look for a GPS coordinates that best match a set of keywords.
Example, if you did a search for Lego, the first result would probably be Lego land. (Lots and lots of vacation pics.) The next 2-5 would probably be big, famous Lego artworks that lots of people would take pictures of. You could do a search for waterfalls and find all the most picturesque waterfalls in your area.
http://flickr.com/services/feeds/
http://flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gn
On the downside, you have to be careful with your meta-data. I can only imagine stalkers having a field day once GPS coordinates are embedded into pictures.