I just love maps and aerial photographs I've been collecting maps (buying them from car boot sales) for years. I always thought I would have made a great aerial photograph interpreter. The satellite view on Google Maps can keep me entertained for hours on end, finding old air fields, following the line of disused railway lines and spotting oddities.
My Cody Box Kite
About the best actual aerial shot I got
Most of my shots looked like this
Some of you will know that my Twitter name is KiteRunnerUK because I love kites. You maybe surprised to know that I don't like kites with 2 stings on them. I've never felt the urge to go kite surfing or anything like that. I like basic simple classic kites. You can do some pretty good stunt flying with a pound shop kite if you know how to work it. I used to have a very fancy stunt kite but could never get it to do anything but nosedive into the floor.
Not so long ago I decided to combine these two interests and make a Kite Aerial Photography (KAP) rig. To make a KAP rig you need a few basic things:
1. A Kite with good payload capability for this I use a Cody Box Kite.
2. A camera that you can set to take either one or several delayed pictures. I use an old digital camera attached to an Arduino Micro controller.
3. A Picavet suspension - An arrangement to attach your camera too designed to keep it level
Below are some links to some of these items:
Kite - From Sky High Kites on eBay
Picavet Suspension - A Google search will show you lots of info on this. Mine is made of Meccano
Arduino Camera Hack - A very simple (and brilliant) hack from Randofo on Instructables.com
On May Day bank holiday I met up with David H at Wollaton Park to test my rig in the air for the first time:
My Cody Box Kite
About the best actual aerial shot I got
Most of my shots looked like this
The string that came with my kite is only about 50ft ideally you need to get your kite and rig up to about 200ft. Perfectly possible with this big kite. The lighter your rig the better. I didn't make a great effort to position the camera and at low level it was bouncing about a lot and obviously either pointing to the ground or up into the sky.
Another issue is that the area of the park, the direction of the camera and the prevailing wind meant that it is very difficult to tell if the photos I did get are in the air or on the ground. I stood at the bottom of a hill which also didn't help. To make matters worse it started to rain and the batteries gave up (I had no spares).
All in all I can't wait to try again. Next time I'll use a longer sting with a hoop winder rather than the cheap thing that came with the kite.
I'm thinking about ditching the Picavet and putting camera and Arduino into a ball of some sort giving the camera and Arduino a greater amount of protection.
I'll be doing a camera hack and aerial photography show and tell in the near future at Nottinghack. Do leave a comment if your interested or have any questions or suggestions!
here follows a funny little video showing that kite aerial photography is nothing new!
More inspiration from Make Magazine - Chris Benton is amazing at KAP
