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More Cheap Aerial Photography
ptorrone writes "If you have an old digital camera laying around and pick up a $1.50 Timer Chip from RadioShack or DigiKey you can turn it in to a great aerial photography camera, this how-to from Engadget shows how they did it along with some other projects with the modded camera." We also linked to part 1.
I used to live in Bowling Green, OH and while I was searching around for caches to do in the area (and talking to someone I knew from Toledo) I was directed and half stumbled upon this cache. Basically you need to take pictures from the air of an assigned number. The cache owner didn't particularly care how you accomplished that (whether it was by plane or some more inventive means).
:)
Well, this group did it with helium balloons, ethernet cable, and a webcam. Just as inventive, a lot less solder, and if your picture taking device falls you aren't completely out of luck as it may actually survive the fall.
The only difference I see is that you aren't going to be able to have pictures with the same quality which is certainly a bummer but the coolness/geek factor certainly is way up there
but no, this is just based on the same old 555 I always had problems working with in logic class- "Damnit Jim, I'm a software student, not a hardware hacker".
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Anyone have any links on Balloon Photography? Kites are always covered and so are rockets, but I was interested in Balloons and cameras.
After the webpage in the article gets /.'d, take a look at this more comprehensive site on areial photography Kite Aerial Photography.
Some people have a way with words, others not have way.
I could be wrong, but when I was a wee tot many moons ago, couldn't you buy a rocket from Estes that had a camera built-in, that would take a picture (or pictures?) during flight, or at least at apogee when the ejection charge would fire?
:)
/end old fart rant
Sure, now it's digital, and in color, but this is old news.
Check out the best P2P sharing website: MEDIACHEST.COM
You know, I hate to be the "astroturfing nazi" of /., but seeing that the article is written by Phillip Torrone, shouldn't the submitter (Phillip Torrone, it appears) say "... how we did it" ?
I don't like it when I see people submit stories as if they are a third party and just "happened" to come across an article, which they themselves have written.
If you wrote something and find it worthy of the /. crowd, then step forward and claim ownership, dammit! We won't hold it against ya.
Get into this hobby while you can before it becomes difficult and/or illegal.
I've never paid more than 20 cents for a 555, and I can think of at least 5 stores within 10 miles of my house that sell them for that price in single unit quantities.
Anyway, this is the 21st century. Why not do it the "right" way with a $1 PIC12F629?
Jason
ProfQuotes
Notice: Digikey link expired.
And if you buy most any component from radio shack, you are paying too much.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
so it is 100% ineffective against a film camera.
thanks!
destroys autofocus?
surely the effective focal length for ALL aerial shots will be infinity anyway?
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
No sale. There are so many technologies other than IR that can be used, and why would DHS need to keep this a secret.
The question, which has remained until now, unanswered: do nerds look like nerds at 1000 feet?
I believe, after reviewing the photographic evidence...yes.
"This isn't a study in computer science, its a study in human behavior"
reading the headline I thought of bringing one of those disposable cameras on a plane and taking pictures out the window.
CB
free ipod and free gmail!
This is way better than the old method of setting the timer and repeatedly throwing the camera in the air in hopes that it will be pointed down when takes the picture.
...If you have an old digital camera laying around ...
No, I don't. I am still using the one I bought two years ago. Should I feel guilty now, because of not buying a new gadget in time? How often are you supposed to replace your digicam?
Get an Aiptek PenCam, preferably an older one. It will take AVI movies without sound. You can get about 2 minutes on a 256 SD card. Its movies are basically a bunch of still shots. The camera weighs very little and a decent sized party-type helium balloon will lift it easily. With the balloon you don't waste time getting it launched and it's easy to position exactly where you want it. You can get this camera for @$40 US
The guy behind this, Phillip Torrone, has done a TON more cool stuff. Check out his site/blog for tons more stuff.
This dude is now my personal hero of geekdom. He builds robots and gear and has pics of tons of stuff on his site.
Chris
Brontosaurus? Luxury!
We had to sit on a fish trying to crawl onto dry land and rearrange lilly pads until they made a picture.
diffused skyward to destroy the autofocus of most cameras and in many cases it will destroy the camera's light element itself.
:)
Autofocus in aerial photography? What are you smoking, man...
Oh darn, I'll just have to get a manual-focus and manual-aperture camera for all my terro^H^H^H^H^Haerial photography needs. I'll just set the focus to infinity and the aperture from the ground (or even just guess at the f-stop #... 8 maybe?).
Or am I threatening national security by relating my knowledge of these VERY basic photography skills?
- "Nobody came out that night, not one was ever seen. But Old Man Stauf is waiting there, crazy sick and mean!"
That's interesting, but I don't know how effective it is.
First, at altitude, focus isn't necessary because everything will be close enough to infinity (hyperfocal). So destroying an autofocus sensor won't help.
Second, my camera can withstand looking at the sun for a period of time (not much time, I'm sure). And that's a focused light source -- it'll be hard to make a laser brighter than the sun over such a large area. (easy to do if you point the laser, but hard to do if it's diffused). No real use in using a laser, though - you don't need the monochromaticity or the coherentness, so you might as well use a large xenon strobe behind an IR filter.
Lastly, won't stop any film-based camera: a cheap disposable or an Estes Cineroc.
Hope not too much taxpayer money is spent on this system!
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
Sure the timer chip is cheap, but the camera plus GPS device make it an expensive toy. If you can get it up high enough how do you filter out the UV/haze. My kites always crash anyway.
Most decent digital cameras don't actually use IR for autofocus. For example, dSLRs like mine use image processing on to look for sharp lines and focus on those. Your super-dooper IR laser will just show up as a nice white spot on such a camera.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
Back when I flew Radio-Controlled Gliders ( Gentle Lady in particular), I used a third channel servo to click the button on a Kodak 110 Instamatic. This was waaaaay before small digital cameras.
The contraption was very simple: I duct-taped the servo on top of the camera and rubber-banded the camera to the plane. I made sure the center of balance remained exactly the same.
Although the plane was relatively MUCH heavier, it was flyable. Certainly, I was not able to catch thermals or stay up long, but I was still able to take some cool shots of the surrounding area. Since the picture taking was servo activated, I could point the plane at an area I wanted to photograph and snap the picture.
This one gang kept wanting me to join cause I'm pretty good with a bo staff.
Do me a favor- quit your job. I'm tired of paying you with my taxes and everyone else with what little income I have left.
Sheesh.
Timer chip - $1.50
Digital camera - $100
Remote controlled airplane - $250
Having the FBI raid your house at 3am - priceless
Dave Ahlman's kite thingy..
radioshack? *coughradioshackisevilcough*
Make no mistake. Engadget is a commercial enterprise (WEBLOGS, INC. NETWORK) masquerading as a blog site. It's under contract by Motorola to promote the Sidekick product. Pure advertorial.
I suspect that they are paying Slashdot for placement of these 'stories'. Check out the Engadget editor admitting to submitting a story without disclosing his connection to Engadget. Mr. Blue VT is right on the money. In the example posted above, the editor's account, r-blo, had been created, then submitted two stories, both of which were accepted for publication while no posting or other activity had been recorded in its history.
If my assertions are false, then Phillip Torrone can say that he's not an employee of WIN and that money hasn't changed hands between WIN and Slashdot and Motorola and WIN for story placement.
Oh, yeah. Thanks, MrBlue VT for linking to the ONLY story I've submitted to slashdot that's been accepted. Coincidentally, it is the first mention of kite arial photography on this site.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Spend $11 on a Ritz single use digital camera that does 1.2 megapixels. Another $5 or some scavenging for an old palm cable to match the camera connector, some downloadable software, a few minutes with a soldering iron and you've got a cheap digital camera that you won't feel bad about smashing on the pavement when it turns out you didn't fasten it as well as you thought you had.