$50 Aerial Digital Photography from a Balloon

jizmonkey writes "This guy built a balloon to take digital aerial photographs from thousands of feet up. It cost less than $50 altogether, including the image sensor, controller, and balloon. The circuit is surprisingly straightforward: just a hacked Vivitar minicamera, a 555 timer chip driving a relay through a voltage regulator, and a one-meter party balloon like the ones you see at used car dealerships. It just so happens that the entire circuit, strapped to a piece of a pizza box and tied to a really long string, is light enough to be lifted by the balloon. What could low-cost aerial photography be used for? I'm sure some people have some ideas...."

Impilcations and alternatives...

Implications? An increased number of one-meter-balloon purchases and camera-raining-down-from-sky events in suburbia... Incidentally, you can get nice high-res aerial images of almost every major populated area in the US for just under the price tag of this rigged weather balloon: Keyhole's Earthviewer software and service, $49.95 a month... By all means, though, if it's an image from above of the new 2:1 scale Star Wars vessel you built in your backyard that you need and Keyhole's archived shots won't do it for you, be my guest and rig one of these babies up!

Re:Impilcations and alternatives...

Yeah and why even buy a camera to take photographs, you can just hire a photographer to take pictures of people doing other things you did once. Sure they might pictures that you don't want but who cares right?

The reason you would do this is not to get just any pictures from the sky, it's to get YOUR pictures from the sky. Like a picture of your house, or your car, or your neighborhood (all of these with you standing in the picture (or out of it depending on how YOU feel) controlling where the balloon goes to take pictures. Not an archived photo of someone elses. And that's $50 A MONTH, not close to a one time fee of $50. And also these are your pictures to share with the world, I'm pretty sure I can't go around sharing keyhole's earthviewer pictures with all my friends.

So...

...how long will it be before he gets sued by Barbra Streisand?

Re:So...

There's a guy who's been flying around the Oregon and California coastlines taking aerial shots and putting them on his website. It's actually quite nice. He has documented the entire California coast except for the restricted area around an Air Force base.

Goregeous photos.

And one can tell that he's put a lot of hard work into his project.

Here's the problem. Barbara's got her panties in a bunch because this guy's photos show exactly how to get to her secluded beachfront mansion. So she's trying to sue him for invasion of privacy or some such BS.

She seems to not know that any deranged fan who has her address could get directions to her house from Mapquest. Who knows, if she realized this, she'd probably sue them too.

Sorry, I don't have the project's URL handy.

wbs.

heh

this criticism from a guy named "larry bagina?"

Too funny. Only on /.

Not a free balloon

No person may operate an unmanned free balloon

This is an unmanned tethered balloon. Unless I'm missing an obscure bit of aeronautical jargon here, this regulation doesn't apply. And for good reason I'd gather, since a tethered balloon can be reeled in, but a free balloon (like most weather balloons) goes where it wants once you release it.

Re:Not a free balloon

Excellent point. The regulations for a Tethered balloon are:

(a) Except as provided in paragraph (b) of this section, no person may operate a moored balloon or kite- (1) Less than 500 feet from the base of any cloud; (2) More than 500 feet above the surface of the earth; (3) From an area where the ground visibility is less than three miles; or (4) Within five miles of the boundary of any airport. (b) Paragraph (a) of this section does not apply to the operation of a balloon or kite below the top of any structure and within 250 feet of it, if that shielded operation does not obscure any lighting on the structure.

This regulation is even worse, due to the limitation of 500 feet above ground. Again, thanks to Google [google.com] and to these guys [hawaii.edu].

Re:Not a free balloon

This was a 1 meter balloon, so isn't affected by these rules.

These rules, as specified in the link, apply only to a balloon with a diameter of more than 6 feet or a gas capacity of more than 115 cubic feet.

Planes...

As a private pilot, I hope he keeps this thing below 1,000 feet.

Doesn't sound like as much fun...

...as Kite Aerial Photography [berkeley.edu]. Same idea, except you suspend the camera from a kite.

Re:Doesn't sound like as much fun...

Kites can lift a lot more weight and subsequently people are usign higher quality (SLR) cameras.

Here is a project camtroller [sourceforge.net] to use a Parrallax Basic Stamp to control a digital camera on a kite.

More info here: rc-soar [rc-soar.com]

Two Words

Naked Sunbathing

Other solutions...

Cheap aerial photography has already been around for a while. A lot of people have been using kites to accomplish this, but a cheap balloon is much less dependent on the environment being just right. (It doesn't have to be windy.)

Kite Aerial Photography [netcom.com]
Mosaics of kite aerial photographs [mit.edu]
Aerial photography using a balloon at Burning Man [antfarm.org]
Other types of aerial photography (balloon, helicopter, kite, even periscope!) [washedashore.com]

"Dakota DIGITAL single-use camera," $11???

Speaking of gadgets to use in projects like this one...

In the July 24th Boston Globe, Ritz is advertising something called a "Dakota Digital Single-Use Camera."

Now, I've seen a "digital single-use cameras" from Kodak which just used film, and the only thing "digital" about them is that when you send them in for processing, they scan the negatives and send you a CD along with the prints.

But this one SAYS "Delete and Retake Last Shot," which, to me, suggests that it really IS digital. It's $10.99. It says it will take 25 images. No indication of resolution. And no indication of precisely what you do after you have taken the pictures.

I probably need to get one and crack one open. It sounds like a very interesting device for hacking.

It will be very annoying if it turns out that $10.99 means that you pay $60.00 up front and get $49.01 back when you bring it in for "processing," though.

Googling on "Dakota Digital Single-Use Camera" and even "Digital Single-Use Camera" doesn't turn up anything except that phony Kodak film camera...

Re:"Dakota DIGITAL single-use camera," $11???

I think Walgreens beat them: Walgreen's single-use digital camera [privatelabelmag.com]

"it's 'the only single use camera' with a delete button to let them retake shots"

Ex-prisoners

I just had a vision of releasing prisoners early, and using this balloon/camera thingy to track their every move. It hovers over them all the time, and feeds pictures back to some central point so their whereabouts can be monitored at all times. They're free to go wherever the rest of us can go, but they have this camera hovering over them all the time until their sentence is up. Think of the savings in jail accomodation!

Then the fatal flaw hit me: the ex-con goes for a job interview, holding a 1m balloon with a camera suspended below it, on a piece of string, in an office trying to describe how he'd be a great employee.

The local bad guys' public bar would look like a fairground, full of shiny balloons. "Mum, can we go play in that new inside park?" would be the cry from the kindergarten set.

Or imagine a typical NBA game. With the number of balloons that would be floating over the players, nobody would be able to watch the game. Hold on - there's no reason the balloons couldn't contain advertising.

Well, actually that's several fatal flaws, but I still think it has "weird and cool" merits that override the "it's a really, really dumb idea" issues. This idea has a really great application somewhere, but I just can't see it at the moment.

Gotta get more sleep tonight

Wireless + Balloon + Camera?

Ok, so I have two ideas here. One i think someone has already implemented.

I'm first thinking that balloons could be a really easy way to get a wireless network to cover a large area. A stripped down wireless unit, a super light battery ( or solar/wind power source), and a really large balloon. Put a few of these up on long strings, and i could cover cambridge or back bay (Boston) pretty quickly I would think.

Ok, second idea. What about some wireless hookup for the digital camera, so that you could put a camera up there, and not take it down often, but control the camera (zoom?) - or at least take the pictures, and then transfer them to the ground. I would think that this could really rock. Get 4-8 of those party balloons (at what point is this a 'weather balloon' and are there any laws about these?), so you could pick up 2-4 lbs, then, mount the stuff on a little box. Put a few strings on it, and let it fly. Snap snap snap, download the camera, zoom in, etc...

Automobile traffic analysis

Funny that this story should come up; I was making an exceptionally long commute to a project today (80 miles each way, 40 of which were in heavy traffic) and was thinking about an analysis of traffic patterns - starting with the hypothesis that the density and speed of vehicles in each lane constitutes a form of pressure and the how this is affected by the number of cars entering and exiting at each intersection, and also the addition / subtraction of lanes along the course of the route. I was thinking that this could be accomplished with some custom image recognition software and a medium-resolution video stream from a several cameras a few thousand feet up (I was thinking helicopters, circling aircraft, and even blimps, but all would be much too expensive). I hadn't considered that a balloon might work so well.....

REAAAAALLLLLY high balloon pics

Or, for only two or three hundred more, you can get pictures from the edge of space on a balloon. We have gone to over 110k feet and recovered inexpensive film cameras, and have some incredible shots.

Photos [space.edu]

or

High Altitude Balloon Project [space.edu]

Re:How did you recover the balloon?

we have had 26 or launches, recovered all but the first one. ground distance is anywhere from several miles up to 200 miles. It radios back telemetry through a ham radio link, which gives us a moving map of us and the payload. actual recovery usually is in northern minnesota swamp/forest land, so we have had a couple that have taken a days to recover. the walk is usually never more than a mile, but that can be in some fairly hostile areas.

Here's some other examples using kites:

William Freeman has a good page on his MIT AI lab homepage about doing the same thing except using kites to take pictures. (Btw, check out William T Freemans MIT e-mail address...)
http://www.ai.mit.edu/people/wtf/kite.html [mit.edu]

And another link to a good site is Charles Benton's site.
http://www.arch.ced.berkeley.edu/kap/ [berkeley.edu]

Its interesting to note that there are lots of methos for creating unstructured panoramas. Where you have a set of images and the algorithm does its best to determine how to stick the images together to form a panorama. You could imagine a similar algorithm using these images to auotmatically create aerial maps... might make a good paper.

Outside?

Wait, so this involves going outside? Forget that.

Not fun for GA

In populated areas fixedwing can't go below 1000' (legally) but rotor can. I routinely fly between 500 and 1000' feet. I'd probably see one of these things in time but if I didn't it wouldn't be fun. Probably wouldn't damage the aircraft (unless I got real unlucky and a blade hit the camera itself) but it would surely scare the bejeezus out of me. Birds are bad enough, lots of little cameras in ballons does not sound fun.

AIPTek Pencam and Mustek Mini3 cameras

For a modest increase in budget, you can get a big increase in the quality of the photos. In the really light, fairly cheap, and better quality digtal camera catagory are the AIPTek Pencam 1.3 and Mustek Mini3 cameras. I bought my AIPTek Pencam for about $70 and it takes pretty good digital photos at 1.3MP.

Both of them are fairly easy to modify as well and there are sites that show in detail how to take them apart and enable other triggering options - such as a 555 or a radio controlled trigger. One example: http://www.rc-cam.com/camman.htm

USB Remote

I'm working on a similar project (well, if you consider trying to raise the money to be "working"). Being a professional photographer, I want professional results, and that means remote preview through the camera via USB (why oh why don't prosumer cameras come with FireWire?) and of course USB craps out after about 5 meters. But I just found out that someone finally did the impossible, a 1000ft USB extension device. It's an active microprocessor controlled relay device, you need one at both ends, runs off 12v so I could use a 12v battery to power it. But now I can't find the damn vendor. Anyone know who makes this device?

Cool...

Set them up and use them for Airborne recon of M$ and RIAA Headquarters, and if the returned pictures show the HQ below, you press a button to release a small canister of urine, or other disgusting liquid of your choice.

Just a sec, there's some guy in a black trenchcoat at the door...

Kite Aerial Panoramic Photography

That's pretty cool, but check out Kite Aerial Panoramic Photography [philohome.com] from one of my heros, Philo!

Weight reduction & circuit suggestions...

Ok, I'm an EE so I need to offer some advice...

First, I don't see a protection diode on that relay. You need a diode that will be normally reverse-biased on the coil... otherwise, when the relay clicks off, the inductance of the coil will kick back enough voltage to blow out the 555. It's a reliability issue.

Second, the 555 is a nice analog circuit that's rated for 4.5-15 volts, so no need to use a 7805 voltage regulator; you can connect to the battery directly.

Third, a battery idea: Radioshack has some 12 volt batteries that are about N-size (sub AA). They are typically used for lighters, pagers, or remotes.

Lastly, as you mentioned, the ultimate would be to get rid of the relay and connect directly to the camera. The CMOS version of the 555 would be ideal because (1) it's low power, so you might be able to drive if from the camera's step-up power supply and (2) it has a FET output, so it'll drive much closer the the GND&VCC rails than the TTL version (this should help compatibility)

Good luck, and nice photos!