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Hello all - Today we increased the price for balloon mapping kits from $85 to $115, and I wanted
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To the PLOTS community, I'm a high school science teacher and researcher out in Los Angeles who
Amazing. We should apply this methods of displaying photos and IR to our photos. We use Hugin for stitching, and it works good.
I got a five pack of 4LR44 6v batteries for $4.74 incl shipping (the price has since dropped). I haven't tried them yet, but two of them fit in a AA holder (tight fit, but very convenient). Also, if the no-relay configuration works, one of them should power the whole deal.
Very eager to see the relay-less design! I am endurance-testing two 9v batteries in series, which is ~18v. It did not immediately burn out the 555 :-) and has been going for ~15 min now.
I'll prob. let it run for 45 mins and check the voltage afterwards too.
25 mins and counting... hooray!
Randy has confirmed that a good experiment would be to:
1) Build the MK111 timer without the relay.
2) Solder a wire between pin 3 (OUT) on the 555 and COM on the J2 terminal block
3) Solder a wire between GND on the J1 block and NO on the J2 block
It should then be possible to power the whole thing with just one 5-6v battery pack, and that power will trigger the camera shutters via the USB cables.
Can you guess if I am going to try this?
Randy's response got lost (my bad?) so here is his latest comment:
Thanks Chris for the schematic. I've done a little poking around and here's what I've learned:
There are two different commonly used variants of the 555:
LM555: Requires supply voltage between 4.5V to 15V. Can source up to 100mA from OUT (pin 3)
TLC555: Requires supply voltage between 2V to 15V. Can source up to 10mA from OUT (pin 3)
According to http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/USB_Remote_Cable, you don't need much current at all to trigger the camera -- the IXUS 80 for example uses less than 1mA. So either variant of the 555 should have no trouble.
Here's an experiment you might consider trying:
1) Disconnect the relay coil by cutting a trace between pin 3 and the relay coil. (Or you can remove the relay altogether).
2) Power the board with 5 to 6V, instead of 12V. After the half-volt drop from D3, this will provide 4.5V to 5.5V to your 555, and then your 555 will provide the same 4.5V to 5.5V to your camera via the USB cable trigger. If you have the TLC555, you can probably get away with a lower-voltage battery, maybe down to 4.5V, yielding 4V to your TLC555 and your camera, since the TLC555 works down to 2V, and I imagine the camera will still trigger fine down to 4V. If you want to reduce battery voltages by half a volt on both sides (e.g. 4.5V-5.5V or 4V-5.5V), you could short across D3, but you'd have to promise to never plug in your battery backwards. (Diode D3's role is to keep your board from letting out the magic smoke if you hook your battery backwards by accident).
3) Now connect the USB cable going to your camera to OUT (pin 3) of the 555, and the board's ground. You might consider jumping these signals to J2 for ease of connection, in which case you might want to disconnect J2 from the relay, or just use the two signals that are open-circuited when the relay is off (should be COM and NO). Note that you don't need a second power supply -- the 555 is supplying the ~5V signal directly to the camera.
If I were designing this circuit from scratch, I'd probably add a 5V regulator between the battery and the 555, so that you could use any battery voltage 6V-12V and still be confident about getting a controlled voltage to your camera.
Randy
Excellent and inspiring research note!
Thanks Sara,
Surprised? Yes, at how bloody long it takes to align, analyse, output, and stitch together the images for EACH panorama;]
Most of this could probably be automated in ImageJ or Fiji. Until this happens, high resolution NRG or NDVI maps of large areas might be slow to emerge.
I think my main conclusion is that the IR camera tool works. With a little bit of obsessive attention to detail, some very meaningful results will be possible.
Thanks for sharing these Chris, I have to concur with Jeff these are fabulous! What sorts of conclusions would you draw from these images? I'd be interested to see how you interpret them--did anything surprise you?
How do I make the links to other sites open in a new tab?
(Don't want to lead people away).
you're right -- the annotations to zoom around to are great!
I will try embedding the gigapan. Gigapans are not made for small frames, so it could extend into the unused white space on the right. That might not work well, but might be worth a try. In this case, there is a lot of additional information about this effort at gigapan.com,so encouraging visits there was intended.
Chris -- this is absolutely stunning. You should consider submitting it to the annual Gigapixel Imaging conference!
Do you think you could embed the gigapan in the research note or does it not really work?
Thanks for posting this Stew, these pictures are crazy. It seems these site are calling out for some balloon mapping! There was an attempt last year to get some Tar Sands mapping work off the ground. Perhaps there are people interested in revisiting that?
Hi Jasja,
I think the stereo photography and other synchronous photography done with SDM requires that an external signal be sent to the multiple cameras. That is often done with a switch or timer (or fancy timer for bullet-time sequences). Our goal is to have the cameras receive this signal while they are aloft, so a circuit of some sort is required. SDM or CHDK can trigger a camera at any interval, but it can't synchronize two cameras without an external signal. We have figured out how to use CHDK (which has the same features as SDM) to precisely sync two cameras (http://publiclaboratory.org/notes/cfastie/4-14-2012/good-shutter-synchro...). We are now working on doing this with a $5 timer (http://publiclaboratory.org/notes/cfastie/5-2-2012/no-output-signal-ir-k...). That is mostly resolved except for finding an appropriate battery. Up soon will be syncing the cameras with a $10 transmitter/receiver pair (http://publiclaboratory.org/notes/cfastie/4-22-2012/tiny-remote-control). So it's kind of like all circuits, all the time!
Chris
i am curious for this project.. how does it work? any suggestion please
A huge hole in the landscape surly! Even larger when you consider our royalty on them is down to nothing when infrastructure is considered.
We have new plants just coming out of their pay off (1% royalty only taken) WE are entitled to 25% on these plants per our agreements.
However, the Conservatives have made it clear we will only collect the token about of 6% Canadian funds.
Hi! I am pretty sure that the stereo-data-maker camera firmware hack allows synchronising two cameras to make photos with intervals. In fact, it is what is was made for.
So no need for circuits when using canon powershots!
The site:
http://www.stereo.jpn.org/eng/sdm/index.htm
Here are four CR123 rechargeable batteries and a charger for $26:
http://www.amazon.com/RCR123A-Li-ION-Rechargeable-Batteries-Charger/dp/B...
These can have 4.2 volts apiece when freshly charged, so the MK111 might need only three of them.
Finding a holder for 3 or 4 of these might be a challenge.
Thanks Randy. You must be right about the relay. Here is the circuit for the MK111 timer:
The assembly manual (pdf) has some more specs for the components as well as this schematic again. It would be great to trigger the camera without the relay.
I tested some more batteries. The timer runs (the LED flashes) but the relay does not switch with six or seven eneloop AAA (7.2v or 8.4v). It takes eight eneloop AAA (9.6v) to get the relay to operate. I am endurance testing right now (not me, the timer and two cameras).
The CR123A looks like a good solution. About $2 apiece, and four of them should do the job. Much heavier than I would like, especially since the camera might need separate power, but maybe the best we will do with the MK111.
Thanks for your help.
I found a couple of 9v batteries lying around and neither of them would power the relay, but they did make the LED light on cue. I connected both batteries in series (18v) and the timer worked fine. Maybe one fresh 9v battery would work.
The relay might be a bit of a battery drainer. Some options:
I think the 555 should be able to directly drive the canon USB trigger, so there may be a way to run the 555 on approx 5 volts, and bypass the relay altogether to greatly reduce the power draw. If you can post the schematic, I can try suggesting how to mod the circuit.
We use this low-power $15 intervalometer in our timelapse work: http://www.amazon.com/NEEWER%C2%AE-Timer-Remote-Control-RS-60E3/dp/B003Q.... It drives a Canon G11 camera directly, or you should be able to modify the cable and add a 5V source to trigger CHDK cameras over USB.
CR123A is a 3V primary cell with serious energy density (over 3 watt-hours in a very light package). You can stack a few of these to get the voltage you need, but they're very spendy.
Great! I should try the same thing.
So the 23A battery was my best attempt to find a lightweight and cheap 12v source. But it seems it is not enough. Would 2 or three of them in parallel help? Or we could start googling around for 3 or 6v batteries that don't weigh much.
Gah. If we could find a relay that doesn't require as much power, or switch to a transistor of some sort, this really shouldn't be a problem. This is an old circuit design, and was probably based on the idea that you'd be running it off some reasonably powerful source, not a tiny lithium battery. They were probably thinking about a model train set transformer.
Excellent gut feeling, Jeff.
I powered the timer with 12 rechargeable 1.2v AA (=14.4v) and it worked fine.
It makes a lot of noise and the test lamp blinks on cue. The test lamp was powered by 3 rechargeable 1.2v AAA (=3.6v), and it also worked with three 1.5v button cells (=4.5v).
I also tested it with the visible/IR pair of A495 cameras, and either output battery source triggered both cameras in perfect synchrony. Either of these sources is also lightweight enough to fly, although the three button cells will have to be tested for endurance.
So now we need a 12-15 volt battery that is sufficiently lightweight to fly, sufficiently affordable, and will last for two hours.
Anybody know of such a thing?
I see, OK. Well i think that finding a more powerful 12v source (more current) is not a bad next step for both of us. I think it may be more likely to solve your issue though (gut feeling).
The timer I have seems to be different from all three of yours. The relay NEVER makes a loud click (although it does make a barely audible click). The LED flashing responds well to adjustments of both potentiometers. I can duplicate the always-on LED by turning both pots all the way CC, but otherwise it flashes as it should.
So you have a different problem than I do.