F30POST
F30POST
2012-2015 BMW 3-Series and 4-Series Forum
BMW Garage BMW Meets Register Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read
BMW 3-Series and 4-Series Forum (F30 / F32) | F30POST > BIMMERPOST Universal Forums > Off-Topic Discussions Board > Photography/Videography > $150 space camera.
ARMA SPEED
Post Reply
 
Thread Tools Search this Thread
      09-16-2009, 01:20 PM   #1
bmwturbopower
Captain
bmwturbopower's Avatar
United_States
296
Rep
657
Posts

Drives: 08' E92 335i
Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: Atlanta, GA

iTrader: (8)

$150 space camera.

Certified badassery. Students from MIT build a 'space camera' for $150 bucks.

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/...npu=1&mbid=yhp





The $150 Space Camera.

Bespoke is old hat. Off-the-shelf is in. Even Google runs the world’s biggest and scariest server farms on computers home-made from commodity parts. DIY is cheaper and often better, as Justin Lee and Oliver Yeh found out when they decided to send a camera into space.

The two students (from MIT, of course) put together a low-budget rig to fly a camera high enough to photograph the curvature of the Earth. Instead of rockets, boosters and expensive control systems, they filled a weather balloon with helium and hung a styrofoam beer cooler underneath to carry a cheap Canon A470 compact camera. Instant hand warmers kept things from freezing up and made sure the batteries stayed warm enough to work.

Of course, all this would be pointless if the guys couldn’t find the rig when it landed, so they dropped a prepaid GPS-equipped cellphone inside the box for tracking. Total cost, including duct tape? $148.

Launch

Two weeks ago, on Sept. 2, at the leisurely post-breakfast hour of 11:45 a.m., the balloon was launched from Sturbridge, Massachusetts. Lee and Yeh took a road trip in order to stop prevailing winds from taking the balloon out onto the Atlantic, and checked in on the University of Wisconsin’s balloon trajectory website to estimate the landing site.

Because of spotty cellphone coverage in central Massachusetts, it was important to keep the rig in the center of the state so it could be found upon landing. Light winds meant the guys got lucky and, although the cellphone’s external antenna was buried upon landing, the fix they got as the balloon was coming down was close enough.

The Photographs

The balloon and camera made it up high enough to see the black sky curling around our blue planet. The Canon was hacked with the CHDK (Canon Hacker’s Development Kit) open-source firmware, which adds many features to Canon’s cameras. The intervalometer (interval timer) was set to shoot a picture every five seconds, and the 8-GB memory card was enough to hold pictures for the five-hour duration of the flight.

The picture you see above was shot from around 93,000 feet, just shy of 18 miles high. To give you an idea of how high that is, when the balloon burst, the beer-cooler took 40 minutes to come back to Earth.

What is most astonishing about this launch, named Project Icarus, is that anyone could do it. The budget is so small as to be almost nonexistent (the guys slept in their car the night before the launch to save money), so that even if everything went wrong, a second, third or fourth attempt would be easy. All it took was a grand idea and an afternoon poking around the hardware store.

The project website has few details on how the balloon was put together — but the students say they will be posting the step-by-step instructions soon. UPDATE: The instructions will be available for free, not $150, as earlier reported.
__________________
/// E92 | JB4 | UR DP | BMS DCI | H&R | LC Z2S |
Appreciate 0
      09-16-2009, 02:00 PM   #2
PNF
Colonel
PNF's Avatar
Taiwan
165
Rep
2,355
Posts

Drives: 15' YMB F80 M3
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: Wayne, PA / Taipei

iTrader: (4)

read it on Yahoo and I thought thats some pretty smart idea~
__________________
2015 F80 Fully loaded (minus the CCB) YMB M3 / Individual Amaro Brown
BBS | KW | Vorsteiner | IND | Akrapovic | BMW CF Performance Interior | Brembo | Eibach

2008 E92 335i (sold)
Appreciate 0
      09-16-2009, 02:22 PM   #3
anthony @ eas
anthony @ eas's Avatar
United_States
307
Rep
3,635
Posts

Drives: R56 Cooper S
Join Date: May 2009
Location: 4015 E Leaverton Court, Anahiem, CA 92807

iTrader: (0)

Wow. That's SO awesome. +1 for ingenuity.
Appreciate 0
      09-16-2009, 06:24 PM   #4
Dr_Jones
Major
70
Rep
1,027
Posts

Drives:
Join Date: May 2008

iTrader: (0)

dorks...whatever happened to blow and hookers

but seriously...thats crazy
__________________
Just like Indiana...I love my whip

Appreciate 0
Post Reply

Bookmarks

Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off



All times are GMT -5. The time now is 06:30 AM.




f30post
Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.11
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions Inc.
1Addicts.com, BIMMERPOST.com, E90Post.com, F30Post.com, M3Post.com, ZPost.com, 5Post.com, 6Post.com, 7Post.com, XBimmers.com logo and trademark are properties of BIMMERPOST