Build Your Own KiteCam 168
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!"
there's MUCH better work out there. (Score:5, Informative)
Go look up Kite Aerial Photography on google, and check out this guy's 3-d panoramas:
http://scotthaefner.com/kap/360panos/
Interesting choice for a camera... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Full Article Here (Score:5, Informative)
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
Nothing new (Score:5, Informative)
Cheaper digital cameras for aerial photography (Score:5, Informative)
For example, the AIPTek Pencam 1.3 [aiptekusa.com] 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 [mustek.com] 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 [rcgroups.com]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 [rc-cam.com].
Academic slant... (Score:4, Informative)
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 [emporia.edu] or the Physical Sciences homepage [emporia.edu] 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.)
Re:X10 cam? (Score:4, Informative)
IIRC (Score:3, Informative)
/.ed ? (Score:2, Informative)
Here's a Mirror of the site (with video) (Score:3, Informative)
http://personalpages.bellsouth.net/s/a/sanv/kitec
A Flexifoil??? (Score:5, Informative)
I've been flying multi line kits for almost twenty years. A Flexi [flexifoil.com] 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 [kites.org] 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 [accesshollywood.com] for free music and video!
Re:Now He'll Need a Bandwidth Fund Too (Score:3, Informative)
In future I'd recommend downloading a little app from Microsoft called Windows Media Encoder and messing around with the settings until you get a really small file that plays back double size.
Better still, upgrade a copy of QuickTime to the pro version and make a 160x120 12fps movie using sorensons codec with an avg bit rate of around 40k and set it to play back double size.
A little research means you'd still have a camera and a server!!
Re:Kites... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Well... (Score:3, Informative)
dup! (Score:3, Informative)