[OSGeo-Boston] rectified balloon photography!!

[Jeffrey Warren]

Sorry for the repeat sending, it didn't go through to the OSGeo list...

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Hi all -

We talked last time we met at the Media Lab about doing rectified balloon
photography, so here's an update! Is anyone interested in meeting in the
first week of December or the last of November to do some more balloon
mapping and have another meetup to exchange ideas? We can host it at the
Media Lab again. Maybe we could meet on a Saturday so we can balloon in the
daylight?

-Jeff

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Link: Grassroots Mapping: Balloon test #3
success<http://unterbahn.com/2009/11/grassroots-aerial-map/>
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Josh Levinger <http://www.levinger.net/josh/> of
GroundTruth<http://groundtruth.media.mit.edu/> and
I tested our larger 8 foot balloon yesterday, and it was a huge success! We
ran all the way through our spool of string, and got some great images
before the light got too dim. I rectified them using Map
Warper<http://warper.geothings.net/> (fantastic!)
and we now have a mostly continuous ’scan’ of our flight.

[image: Screen shot 2009-11-19 at 11.04.31
PM]<http://warper.geothings.net/layers/31>

This means this can be a viable way to capture high-resolution geolocated
imagery at low cost! I spent under $100 on the equipment – $30 for the
balloon, $40 for the camera, $5 for the helium, and a few bucks for string.
I bet it could be done for under $50 with a cheaper camera and perhaps trash
bags instead of latex balloons. We’ll be trying that soon – I’d guess we
need about 10 of these 98-gallon
bags<http://www.ourshippingsupplies.com/productDetails.asp?id=LD-1525R-RC>.
I also turned the ISO way up for this because the light was failing, so the
photos are pretty grainy. This camera doesn’t have shutter speed settings,
though I’m still playing around with the CHDK <http://chdk.wikia.com/> settings
so maybe I’ll do better next time.
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