cameras

G12 & G13 test – Aug 10

8/10/11

Don and Dudu took the G12 and G13 rokkakus with the new taped construction to Crown Beach for another test. They used a telephoto camera mount to take video with a GoPro from one of the lines and from the ground and put Joe’s superlight mount on the back of one of the kites.

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.

Rok G12 & G13 test – Aug 5

8/5/11

At Crown Beach. Don flew both the G12 and G13 design rokkaku kites with the new taped construction. He used a half of a plastic toy world globe and a 55mm UV lens filter to create a protective camera housing.

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.

Rok G12 – fully taped construction – test Aug 3

8/3/11

This was the first test of the new construction, which includes cubic 50mm tape inside and out and 25mm double-sided tape.

We inflated the kite to 5psi. We tested over 2.5 hours at Crown Beach, in 10-knot winds. The flight was stable, with a line angle at 45-50 degrees. We taped a GoPro to the line and used a 100m 1.6mm line.

Betsy note: bottom photos show the G12 kite seams in the shop prior to the test.

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]