Electronics and Software Development

Modified lens on GoPro

8/9/11

The non-fisheye lens on the GoPro is ready for testing on the lifting kites. Here Don hooks it up to the large monitor in the office. In these photos the camera is recording while projecting what it is recording on the big screen. Nalani and Max are visiting.

Superlight GoPro mount

8/5/11

This is intended to be used with the rok kites. Mount weighs 26g and articulates through about 90 degrees. Bare camera weight is around 100g.

Betsy note: our very lightest stock housing + mount weighs 111g. Often, the mounts we use are even heavier. This is not a big problem for the larger kiteboat kites, but it is a significant amount of weight for the lifting kites, as our current roks weigh less than 600g. Joe’s housing is not waterproof, but it should allow us to protect and position the camera on the kite without adversely affecting the kite’s balance.

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]

New line camera mount

6/23/11

Joe made an improved line camera mount that allows for easier adjustment from the boat and a more reliable angle.