Comments (0) This is a cloud time-lapse sequence filmed in West Dover, Nova Scotia. To record the time-lapse photos I used a Canon Powershot SD780IS camera with CHDK and the countdown intervalometer script. The song is "El naixement de les flors" by Roger Subirana Mata.
This is a short film of bees at work gathering nectar from the wild flowers in my backyard. It was created using the macro photography mode on a Canon Powershot SD780IS camera with CHDK. The footage was recorded in my garden in West Dover, Nova Scotia.
The song is "Angels of Hope" by Roger Subirana Mata from the Album "Our Moon".
I have been working on an ambitious long-term hobby project of developing my own Mac OS X based UAV ground control station system. I have been tinkering away at it slowly since February 2008. I've done all the programming and my brother and I together have built a lot of the custom hardware and done the model airplane flying. The project is still very much in the "Alpha" stages and no source code or binaries are available to the public.
I have learned so much over the last 3 years about model making, model aviation, electronics, programming, telemetry, networking, mapping, navigation, aerial photography, digital image processing, stereoscopic 3D imaging, meteorology, and many other topics. I have had a chance to experiment with all sorts of different hardware and software tools and equipment.
The main output from this project has been the ongoing improvement to my Mission Control program. Mission Control is a suite of modules that work together to form a low cost ground control station. The software runs on an Apple MacBook Pro laptop. The project started early on with a SDL based user interface and has evolved into a more robust Mac OS X based system with an Objective-C based user interface that uses Quartz Composer based gauges. Live telemetry data can be loaded into the Mission Control program from either a serial port connection, a video OCR engine, or via TCP or UDP protocols.
The Mission Control ground station gauges are run from a program appropriately called "Gauges". The gauge graphics are driven using Apple's node based Quartz Composer software. The gauges are updated based upon GPS data that is received either though a USB serial port interface using Termios or over a network TCP or UDP connection using BSD sockets.
This is the Gauges app using the horizontal display layout.
This is the Gauges app using the vertical display layout.
Continue reading 'The Story of Andrew’s UAV Ground Control Station'»
I recently created several stereoscopic 3D anaglyph images from aerial image pairs taken by my model airplane on Aug 6, 2011. It took some effort to process the images because the plane was combating wind shear while the photographs were being captured. I used Adobe Photoshop and Apple Shake to prepare the stereoscopic images.
Red / Cyan anaglyph 3D glasses are required to view the photos in 3D. Since the images are Phantograms they look the best viewed with a 45 degree downward angle. If you click on a photo on this blog post it will be loaded in the "Lightbox 2" pop-up image viewer and you can watch a slideshow by pressing the right / left keyboard keys or by clicking on the buttons that appear when you are in the viewer.
Enjoy!
This is an enlarged view of the houses on the edge of West Dover.
This is a view looking at one of the churches in West Dover. The buildings seem to jump off the screen due to the phantogram image processing.
This is an image of a stand of coniferous trees located in a bog near Long Lake in West Dover.
This is an enlarged view of the hills at Polly Cove.
Continue reading 'Aerial Photos in Stereoscopic Anaglyph Phantogram Format'»
Today was a great summer's day in West Dover! My brother, Russell & I had a great time flying model airplanes. I'm really happy with the results from this round of aerial photography above West Dover, Nova Scotia. The sun was nice and bright and I was able to shoot with a shutter speed of 1/1000 second at 100 ISO which greatly reduces the effect of motion blur when taking aerial photographs. I used my Countdown Intervalometer script running on a Canon Powershot SD780IS with CHDK to take the photos. I took a total of approx. 450 photos during the flight. The photos were taken with the camera looking sideways mounted under the wing of my EasyStar. The camera had a 45 degree down-tilt.
If you click on a photo to enlarge it you can also view a slideshow. You can control the slideshow by either pressing the right and left cursor keys or by clicking the arrows at the edge of the photos.
An Aerial View of St. Margaret's Bay
Polly Cove is on the left of the photo and Peggy's Cove is at the top.
Polly Cove is located off Highway 333 between West Dover and Peggy's Cove.
A view looking out towards Polly Cove.
Yesterday West Dover experienced heavy rains and a powerful thunder and lightning storm. After the storm ended there was a beautiful double rainbow. I thought it would be a perfect time to get out my camera and take some photos. On this photo excursion I used both my Peleng 8 mm circular fisheye lens and my standard canon zoom lens on my trusty old Canon D60 DSLR camera.
This Rainbow Tree HDR photo captures the full arch of the rainbow using a Peleng 8 mm super wide angle lens. It was late afternoon so the sunlight was coming from a low angle highlighting the leaves on the tree.
As I walked down the highway I noticed a faint double rainbow in this super wide angle fisheye image.
