Multiplex EasyStar
I recently purchased a $24 ArduPilot circuit board from Sparkfun. I have tried to document my early experience using this unique Open Source Autopilot. The board comes from Sparkfun without any 0.1″ header pins so it is up to the end user to do some soldering.
ArduPilot Circuit Board
Today I just completed with my brother, Russell, our most adventurous and complex aerial video from our Multiplex Easy Star model airplane. The video is called “An Aerial Exploration of West Dover” and it is a ride high above West Dover, Nova Scotia. It was filmed in 720p High Definition video.
The airplane was controlled by a 72 MHz Hitec Optic 6 R/C radio and flown using a 900 MHz video link which provided a FPV ( First Person View ). This video was recorded on August 18, 2010 in 720p HD with a Canon Powershot SD780IS Camera with CHDK.
The music used in the video was “Un instant per sempre” and “Our Moon” composed by Roger Subirana Mata.
If you are on High Speed Internet make sure to enable the 720p resolution video option on the lower right of the video controls so you will be able to see all sorts of fine detail.
West Dover Harbour
Privateer's Island
The View of Privateer's Island Looking Towards Mackerel Cove
Power's Lake, West Dover
Here are two photos taken at sunrise today in the West Dover Barrens. Photographed using the RAW DNG feature in CHDK using a Canon Powershot Sd780IS.
Mist over the lake
Sunrise in the Barrens
Today I did an experiment, at sunrise with my Uncle and Brother, where we used a Multiplex Easystar to film by FPV video an aerial chase sequence following a 6 foot Homemade Super Zagi around the skies of West Dover, Nova Scotia, Canada. Here is the edited result:
This is a stereoscopic 3D animated version of the Silicon Graphics SGI HyperCube Logo. It was created in Autodesk Maya. It should be viewed with Red / Cyan 3D anaglyph glasses. For the best experience go full screen and set the resolution to 720p.
Yesterday my family discovered a buried WW2 sea mine in the garden of our cottage near the ocean. From doing a bit of research on the internet the rusted sea mine looks a bit like a British MK14 Naval Mine. If anyone has more knowledge on naval mines, I would love to hear from you. The sea mine is hollow on the inside and quite rusted. I photographed the sea mine using my Canon Powershot camera and took two photos hand-held to try and later create a stereoscopic phantogram. The pictures below are meant to be viewed with red / cyan 3D glasses.
I used Apple Shake to prepare the phantogram and have recently devised a script that uses a series of nodes for handling anaglyph stereoscopic compositing that lets you line up stereo photos and register them properly. I used two corner-pin nodes to align the ground plane to create the phantogram. The Shake script ends with a move3D node to create a real-time phantogram -45° degree simulated viewing angle. Shake also has a region of interest feature called the DOD – “Domain of Definition” that can let you tune a specific part of the image in real-time at 4K resolution.
WW2 Sea Mine - Stereoscopic Red / Cyan Anaglyph