Flew the 9′ delta this afternoon in the wetlands below the college, and sent the NIR camera up for the first time, resulting in photos that look something like this:

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Lessons learned:

1.  Flying solo is more difficult than flying with a partner.  I had to find a stable elevation for the kite, step on the line, and rig the picavet with one hand.  A few times when the camera was dangerously close to the ground, it would have been nice to have a partner to keep it safe from harm.

2.  Given the way that that camera sits inside the bucket, it’s a little difficult to operate it.  I’m going to noodle on a solution…

3.  Always bring a broad-brimmed hat and/or sunglasses.  I had neither.

4.  Always always wear gloves.  I burned through about eight wraps of duct tape in this one flying session.  I like the overall weight of the glove pictured below, I just need to find a way to add a heavy duty sleeve to that finger.

5.  A 1 minute interval is too long.  I’m thinking that 30 seconds will give more overlap, which will enable better knitting.

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Modified the original design a bit, moving up to 2″ aluminum bar stock for the cross, to allow for the camera to hang on the same plane as the balloon string.

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I also added a bucket, which I’ll foam up in an attempt to protect the camera in a bombs away scenario. 2 and a half quarts of security theater!

Update: I walked over to Printing Services and weighed the picavet rig with camera in place. 1 lb, 3.2 ounces. Given the helium shortage, we’re looking into kites as an alternative, and the rig weight will inform the kite selection process.

Though it can at times be overwhelming, one of my favorite things about working on a complex project is the vast number of things – some small, some large – that one has to learn to make it all work.  For this phase of the project, we procured a plant stress camera, which is destined for the ArduPlane and perhaps the quadcopters as well.
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The camera – a Canon SX230 HS modified by LDP LLC/MaxMax.com – arrived recently, and I fired it up today to take some pictures of plants.  I’ve also been reading up on ImageJ, a public domain, Java-based image processing program developed by the National Institutes of Health here in these United States.  I don’t know much about it yet, but the software is extensible via plugins and macros, and the vendor provided various macros to convert RGB images into color scaled Enhanced Normalized Difference Vegetation  Index images, or ENDVI.

The camera also needs to be updated with the Canon Hack Development Kit (CHDK), custom firmware that enables, among other things timed, continuous shooting, which is critical for our purposes.  I’ll be updating the camera with that just as soon as I can read up on it.  Onward!