kiteassist

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]

HMD Goggle Disassembly

6/21/11

We got a pair of goggles with built-in head mounted display (HMD) and GPS/gyro/altimeter in order to see if they would be useful for kiting, if the electronics could be hacked to display other information, and to learn about the design of the display and optics. The goggles, called “Transcend GPS,” were produced by Recon Instruments and Zeal Optics, primarily for the snowboarding market.

In kiteboat tests last week, we found that the display was not very convenient for viewing while flying a kite, since the user must look down to see it. The display optics are large enough to be obtrusive even when removed from the goggles, and would not fit well on a helmet or glasses. The display […more]

Lifting Kite AoA Actuator

6/8/11

Today we remotely controlled our newest inflated Rok lifting kite’s angle of attack (AoA) using a linear actuator in the kite’s bridle. The actuator was controlled from the ground via bluetooth using an Android phone and tablet. The kite flew with comparable stability and lift to a standard-issue Rok that we used as a control, even after some bridle adjustments to accommodate the new actuator.

We found that the 10cm range of the actuator was enough to make a noticeable difference in the kite’s elevation and line tension, but not enough of an adjustment to explore the full useful range of AoA. In the next test we will use a pulley system to double the effective range of the actuator. […more]

AoA adjuster test with G9 rokkaku

6/2/11

We flew the G9 rokkaku kite at the runway, and again at the parking lot outside the shop, to test the angle of attack adjuster that Don and Jamie have been working on. The adjuster operates by changing the length of the back lines. While flying, the front lines take most of the load–the back lines take only about 25%. Shortening the back lines changes the angle of attack so that there is less load on the flying lines, which is helpful for reducing the force on a winch when reeling in the kite. Meanwhile, lengthening the back lines would change the angle of attack to project more kite area and increase the kite’s power, in order to lift a […more]

G11 rokkaku kite test

6/2/11

Flew the G11 rokkaku kite on the runway today. The G11 kite has the same strut-spar connection design as the G9 and G10 kites, but the G11 is 25% smaller overall, and its tubes are made of Dacron, not cuben fiber. The kite flew stably but had a tendency to steer in one direction, which is a problem that many of the earlier roks had. We may be able to solve with bridle readjustments, however.

Wireless GoPro

5/19/11

From Jamie: We have made a circuit board that gives us wireless, networked control over GoPro Hero cameras and requires no camera modification. To minimize overall complexity, we took the approach of connecting to the cameras entirely via the exposed bus connector. We will be able to start and stop all cameras at the same time, and keep a record of those times in our logfiles. This makes it possible to record video and images that are synchronized to the other test data and will conserve camera battery life. The wireless range using smaller, lower-power Atmel ZigBit transceivers is not sufficient to reach the kite, but those receivers should work well for the cameras attached to the kiteboats.