July 2011 Archive

Kitefoiler Test with Cuben Fiber Kite – Jul 20

7/20/11

Tested again with the 25 sqm Cuben Fiber kite. A short test, but good conditions behind Treasure Island (strong wind, relatively calm water). We got some of the best photos yet of the boat. Don and Joe tried to sail under the Bay Bridge, but lost too much wind and dropped the kite. We returned to dock after an hour and then they ventured out again without the Protector.

Kai View Data:
20110720-kf-cubenKite-day2.kai.bz2

Kitefoiler Test with Cuben Fiber Kite – Jul 19

7/19/11

Our first test with the Cuben Fiber/Dacron kite. Tons of power–we were very pleased with the stiffness of the kite (Cuben Fiber does not stretch as much as our other fabrics), but we will need to adjust the bridle, because Don was afraid to drop the kite much in front of the boat, for fear of it pulling too much, so foiling time was brief. We used the original J-foils.

Kai View Data:
20110719-kf-cubenKite.kai.bz2

Precise kite inflation

7/19/11

Don and Joe modified the inflation tube that we use with the compressed air tank so it is possible to see to what pressure the kite is inflated. Previously, this was a problem with the compressed air tanks, because we just had to guess at the inflation by eyeballing the kite. The electric kite pumps have pressure gauges, but they take much longer to inflate a kite. Don and Joe used the newly arrived Cuben Fiber and Dacron kite for practice. We’ll use this kite for the first time later today on the Kitefoiler.

Image Panorama Tests

7/18/11

To generate useful ground imagery from cameras mounted on our kites, we will likely record a succession of images that can then be “stitched” together into a panorama. As an early test, we combined 32 low (VGA) resolution images from the pan/tilt webcam in the boat shop to produce the images here.

Creating coverage of the ground from a kite will be a similar process, so this is a promising result. The projection of the 3D world into a 2D image inherently results in apparent distortion, and the distortion becomes more noticeable as the width of the panorama increases. These images demonstrate two different projections into 2D space, which cause different type of distortion in each case. If the kite […more]

Line Cam Mount options

7/7/11

We have many variation of the line cam mount.

Joe has created quite a few

here are few more to added

Android camera control

7/6/11

Jamie has made sweet innovations allowing the Samsung tablet to act as a remote camera control for the Android phone. He also hooked up the phone to a GoPro. At left is a short video demonstration.

From Jamie:
The main idea is to remotely position a camera that may be on a kite (100m in the sky, or in another country) using Android devices. At the kite side is an Android phone which is relaying images from its camera to the ground, and controlling two servomotors that can pan and tilt the phone. On the ground is an Android tablet on which the image stream from the kite can be viewed and the pan and tilt is controlled. Control […more]