Recently I got a message from Barry Rothstein on the Phantogram user group announcing an exciting contest for stereoscopic 3D photography enthusiasts.
CALL FOR ENTRIES: in the "First Annual Inter-Gallactic Phantogram Competition and Exhibit". Entry deadline is May 15, 2012. I'll shortly start announcing this on the 3-D sites, and I invite you to spread the news. I've lined up two out of three judges, stereographers Achim Bahr, and Terry Wilson. Categories will be: 1) Nature; 2) Live Subject; 3) Still Life; and 4) CGI. Images will be judged on iPads, and are to be submitted in RGB .JPG files. The iPad's native resolution is 1024x768 pixels, and images can be submitted either in vertical or horizontal orientation. Submitting images denotes a willingness to have them posted online, and to be exhibited in print or digital form. There will be prizes for winners, these will be announced soon, as hopefully I'll be able to line up a few sponsors.
Over the last weekend I got out my photography gear and started taking several new stereoscopic 3D Phantogram images to prepare for the contest. Red / Cyan 3D glasses are required to view the photos.
Carved Whalebone Scrimshaw Phantogram
Checkmate Ends the Game Phantogram
Chess Match Phantogram
This is a stereoscopic phantogram image of a PSION Series 5 PDA
This is a stereoscopic phantogram image of a strawberry dessert.
Here is a 1km long aerial mosaic image of Poly Cove in West Dover, Nova Scotia.
This morning I created a large aerial mosaic image of Polly Cove, West Dover, Nova Scotia. The mosaic image was stitched in Microsoft ICE from 25 aerial photos taken on Feb 14, 2012. The mosaic image covers a 1 km distance from Highway 333 to the islands off Polly Cove.
The photos were shot with an EasyStar Model airplane using a Canon PowerShot SD780IS camera and CHDK. I used the CHDK countdown intervalometer script to trigger the photos every 2 seconds with a 1/1500 sec shutter speed override.
I started in Microsoft ICE by creating a few smaller mosaic images using the Planar Motion 1 stitch mode and then merged the smaller mosaic's together in a final stitching pass. The full resolution version of the mosaic was 22,114 x 10,549 pixels (233 megapixels).
You can download a scaled down 3.5 megabyte 8Kx4K version of the mosaic image here: super_polly_cove_mosaic.jpg (Right click on the link and select Save Link As...)
Here is a stitched mosaic in Microsoft ICE from 9 photos.
The easiest way to stitch the big aerial photo mosaic was by merging together 7 smaller mosaics.
This weekend I started exploring aerial photogrammetry using Bundler and Meshlab. The first few Google searches I did while researching aerial photogrammetry discussed KAP (Kite Aerial Photography) enthusiasts who have used free photogrammetry tools like Microsoft PhotoSynth and Synth Export or the open source program Bundler (SfM) to create surveys of archeological sites.
My goal was to use aerial photos my brother & I captured with our EasyStar model airplane to create DEMs (digital elevation models) of our local scenery. The aerial photos I used to test Bundler were taken at a 400 foot altitude with a model airplane flying at 35 kilometers per hour. I used a Canon Powershot SD780IS camera with CHDK and the countdown intervalometer script to trigger the photos.
After a few hours of tinkering with software, reading manuals, and google searching I successfully created and textured my first DEM (digital elevation model).
This is a screenshot in Autodesk Maya of the first photogrammetry model I created using Bundler, and Meshlab.
Sample Bundler Aerial Images
A set of three vertical aerial photos taken with an EasyStar
I have included a ZIP archive with the three aerial photos from this tutorial. You can use these images to follow along with your copy of the Bundler photogrammetry software.
This is part 2 of a tutorial I wrote on using network serial ports on a Linksys router. In part 2 of this tutorial I am going to show how to get a UDP based network serial port running on your Linksys WRT54GS dd-wrt powered router.
This is an animation of netcat receiving a Locosys GPS NMEA datastream via UDP.
The nice thing about Linksys WRT54GS routers is that you can get them for about $25 on eBay. You need to check the model number to make sure it has enough ram to run the full version (standard generic) of dd-wrt and have plenty of memory available to create a JFFS storage partition. You can check out the details and specs of your router model on the dd-wrt router database.
You need to start by following the all the steps on my first blog post to get a working TCP based serial link before you try this tutorial. Part 2 of this tutorial also expects you to have created the JFFS partition and installed the custom build of netcat from the first tutorial. Also, you need to confirm that you are able to remotely connect by TCP to the serial port on your Linksys router and read data from the port.
For this tutorial my Linksys WRT54GS router already has the 10 pin 0.1" serial port header connector soldered onto the circuit board and the router is running dd-wrt with a local IP address of 192.168.1.30
The Linksys WRT54GS router has two serial ports. One of the serial ports is easy to use and the other serial port is tied up with the serial console on the router.
This is a screen capture of the CHDK Motion Detect Plus script in action.
I created a new CHDK motion detection script called "Motion Detect Plus" to take repetitive shots with motion detection.
This Motion Detect Plus script adds a repetitive shot feature to the standard CHDK "motion.lua" script. This is useful for compiling a motion time-lapse sequence using motion detection to trigger the photos instead of a traditional intervalometer.
The script is called motionP.lua and should work with most cameras that support CHDK.
When you are working with source code it is nice to have the code properly indented. You can automatically reformat your unindented C / C++ files in Notepad++ to have proper indentation using the TextFX and NppAutoIndent plugins.
When using the mikroC compiler it is best to have your indentation done using 2 spaces instead of the tab character. For this task it is handy to have Notepad++ automatically convert the tab characters into spaces.
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