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andyeverywhere Occasional Visitor
Joined: Feb 14, 2006 Posts: 1
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Posted: Tue Feb 14, 2006 4:42 pm Post subject: GPS photography query |
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Hi
Can anyone help me out here? I want to GPS control a cam corder such that it takes a picture every ten metres in a moving car..
Has anyone ideas on how to do this?
So far, I worked out that most of the action would take place on a computer running some kind of software such as Labview or Python. But does anyone have an idea which GPS and Camcorders could be used?
Any assistance appreciated
Andy |
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Darren Frequent Visitor
Joined: 11/07/2002 14:36:40 Posts: 23848 Location: Hampshire, UK
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Posted: Tue Feb 14, 2006 5:27 pm Post subject: |
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As the camcorder will be connected to a PC then I would guess that the software could control the camera via Firewire or LANC?
Pretty much any NMEA standard GPS will suffice, but I'd guess either a GPS Mouse or a Bluetooth GPS would be best. _________________ Darren Griffin |
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mikealder Pocket GPS Moderator
Joined: Jan 14, 2005 Posts: 19638 Location: Blackpool , Lancs
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Posted: Tue Feb 14, 2006 6:39 pm Post subject: |
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If you are looking at using Labview you could program the application to run on a PDA with the correct software module, but it costs a fair bit, some educational establishments have the full application for student use, then for communication to trigger the camcorder use the IrDA if the camera supports this (my Cannon Camcorder does and Labview can record/ re-play the IrDA signal at will from the PDA, I actually use it for comms to and from generators). Watch the serial port reader in Labview relative to the GPS side of things as it can easily overfill the buffer leading to the position reported lagging the true position, I found this when I programed a simple NMEA parse in Labview for my XDA - Mike |
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Pocketgps Lifetime Member
Joined: Nov 16, 2004 Posts: 2145 Location: Midlands, UK
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Posted: Tue Feb 14, 2006 8:10 pm Post subject: Re: GPS photography query |
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andyeverywhere wrote: | Hi
Can anyone help me out here? I want to GPS control a cam corder such that it takes a picture every ten metres in a moving car..
Has anyone ideas on how to do this?
So far, I worked out that most of the action would take place on a computer running some kind of software such as Labview or Python. But does anyone have an idea which GPS and Camcorders could be used?
Any assistance appreciated
Andy |
Could you not use the time lapse feature on your camcorder |
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Mullet Frequent Visitor
Joined: Dec 12, 2005 Posts: 1051
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Posted: Tue Feb 14, 2006 9:43 pm Post subject: |
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A couple of things strike me. How accurate will your 10m be, when most consumer GPS receivers have a tolerence of several meters? My camcorder has a several second delay when hitting the capture button so how will this figure? If accuracy is not essential why not just run the camcorder continually then cut out frames with your movie editor software later? |
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Skippy Pocket GPS Verifier
Joined: 24/06/2003 00:22:12 Posts: 2946 Location: Escaped to the Antipodies! 36.83°S 174.75°E
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Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2006 12:42 am Post subject: Re: GPS photography query |
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andyeverywhere wrote: | Has anyone ideas on how to do this? |
Hmm, it's kind of tricky. The problem is that a GPS unit will only update your position every second. 10 meters per second is only about 22 mph so you couldn't really rely on the position information from the GPS to trigger the shutter.
You could use the speed info (updated every second) to tell the camera to take the correct number of frames per second based on your speed. ie 22 mph = 1 fps, 66 mph = 3 fps etc. Be aware that at a constant speed you will get reasonably accurate spacing between the frames but if your speed is changing rapidly then the GPS speed can lag behind reality and you will get distortions.
You could get a laptop with a firewire interface and try and find some software to control it. Alternatively you could record at 25 fps and sync your laptop's time to the GPS then log the GPS NMEA data so you could post process the data and figure out how many frames to drop to get one every 10 meters.
You might also be able to get a cheap usb camera for about £20 and try and write some code or find a library to capture the frames for you. Watch out because some of the cameras are quite slow to capture a picture but provided you are travelling at less than 90 mph you shouldn't have to capture more than 4 fps.
Sounds like an interesting problem, can you tell us more!
Good luck! _________________ Gone fishing! |
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Skippy Pocket GPS Verifier
Joined: 24/06/2003 00:22:12 Posts: 2946 Location: Escaped to the Antipodies! 36.83°S 174.75°E
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Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2006 1:14 am Post subject: |
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You could also have a look at Matlab. It's been around for years and is widely used by the scientific community but I don't know too much about it.
Also have a look at gphoto2 http://www.gphoto.org/doc/manual/ref-gphoto2-cli.html which might do the trick. _________________ Gone fishing! |
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Pc-Mobile Frequent Visitor
Joined: 26/10/2002 10:38:36 Posts: 789 Location: Hong Kong
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Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2006 11:00 am Post subject: |
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You have to ask yourself why do you need a GPS.
If you want also to recod the co-ordinate of where the picture is, that is OK.
If you merely want to take a picture every 10 metres or so from where you are, then there is no need for a GPS. A camera link to a PC (like USB camera) and to the speedometer with suitable sofware would be more appropriate. _________________ Pc-Mobile
http://pc-mobile.net/gps.htm |
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