Skip to main content

Starting my biggest side project

I've had this idea kicking around for a long time now, to use a camera on some kind of moving thing that takes pictures and puts it on the web. (http://www.uncommonprojects.com/uplog/2008/10/14/coding-a-networked-bike/) But instead of using a bike, since I don't bike often, I want to do this with a kite. "Drones can do that for you so you don't have to fly the kite", you might say. And yes, I do have a drone! But before I sink a lot of money in a nice drone setup and GoPro, I think I better practice with my current (cheap) drone. In the meantime, I want to achieve a few things by jumping into kite aerial photography:

1. Make my own kite. Yes, that's right. With my sewing machine that sits unloved in the corner of my room. That makes for another small sub-side-project: learning how to use my sewing machine.
2. Build somewhat of a camera stabilizing harness. I don't know how that'll turn out, but if it works... I'll be so happy.
3. Trigger a camera running CHDK from my Arduino clone/LinkIt One. The reason I want to use the LinkIt One is that it comes with a gpsr and can also write to a microSD card. When I trigger the camera, I also want to read gps data so I can georeference and georectify my pictures later on a map.
4. Put the places I fly my kite rig on a map (on a personal website). It'd be so cool to map the coastline...

What have I done so far?

1. Got a camera that hopefully will work with CHDK. I haven't loaded CHDK on it yet, but according to the website, it should work.
2. Got the LinkIt One to get gps data and parse the nmea data. Also, checked to make sure that the battery for the LinkIt One will work.
3. Got mini-usb cables.

Next step is to cut up a mini usb cable so I can connect it to the LinkIt One and camera. The goal here is to make the LinkIt One send a 5V signal to the camera to trigger the shutter. Hope I don't blow out any of the electronics. :)

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Compiling pgmodeler on Yosemite (with Homebrew)

Refer to  pgmodeler installation . Steps: Clone the pgmodeler git repo. Use Homebrew to install qt5 (5.4.2, see here ), libxml2, and postgresql. Edit the pgmodeler.pri (not .pro) file and change these variables: PGSQL_LIB = /usr/local/opt/postgresql/lib/libpq.dylib PGSQL_INC = /usr/local/opt/postgresql/include XML_INC = /usr/local/opt/libxml2/include/libxml2 XML_LIB = /usr/local/opt/libxml2/lib/libxml2.dylib Follow instructions to compile pgmodeler (you might need to put Qt's binaries in your PATH. I was lazy and didn't). $ /usr/local/opt/qt5/bin/qmake pgmodeler.pro $ make $ make install $ cd /Applications $ /usr/local/opt/qt5/bin/macdeployqt pgmodeler.app -executable=pgmodeler.app/Contents/MacOS/pgmodeler-ch -executable=pgmodeler.app/Contents/MacOS/pgmodeler-cli Then I was able to do $ open pgmodeler.app

pgmodeler build in Debian Jessie

This is my qmake version: $ qmake -v QMake version 3.0 Using Qt version 5.3.2 in /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu I had to edit linuxdeploy.sh: 1. Add "-makefile" to the QMAKE_ARGS variable: $ qmake -h Usage: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt5/bin/qmake [mode] [options] [files] where mode is either "-makefile" (default) or "-project" QMAKE_ARGS="-makefile -r -spec linux-clang" 2. Right before "Running qmake...", I added another line to include pgmodeler.pro in the qmake invocation: QMAKE_ARGS="$QMAKE_ARGS pgmodeler.pro" Then I ran ./linuxdeploy.sh -no-qt-libs (https://github.com/pgmodeler/pgmodeler/issues/674)

Building and installing CAN bus bundle on Kura/Eurotech Software Framework

The documentation is incomplete as of 11/25/2015:  http://esf.eurotech.com/docs/how-to-use-can-bus . It shows you how to setup the can0/can1 interfaces. I think I finally figured out the real steps to getting the CAN bus service working in Kura. I found this website somewhat useful:  https://tobiddev.wordpress.com/2015/03/23/one-bundle-project-modbus-and-eclipse-kura/ . It didn't tell me how to build a bundle, but I took a chance with the following and now I'm able to see my module loading the CanConnectionService in the Kura logs. First, build Kura from source following this guide:  https://wiki.eclipse.org/Kura/Getting_Started . You'll probably want to build it in Linux (I am using Debian Jessie) or possibly OS X (I didn't test it). For sure, it fails in Windows 8 at the create_installer.sh part, so I decided not to waste any more time on it. You basically need Kura built just enough so that you can load everything into Eclipse. I was able to do this using Eclipse...