DIY Pictures from space for USD $150

[Marco Ostini]

Hey Numbatters,

I suspect that some of you would have seen this story on Slashdot;
"Two MIT students have successfully photographed the earth from space
on a strikingly low budget of $148. Perhaps more significantly, they
managed to accomplish this feat using components available off-the-
shelf to the average layperson, opening the door for a new generation
of amateur space enthusiasts. The pair plan to launch again..."

The hardware list is a collection of very available items:

Sounding Balloon 350g from Kaymont
Parachute
Motorola i290 Prepaid Cellphone
Styrofoam Beer Cooler
Duct Tape
Zip Ties
Canon A470 with 8GB SD card
Insulation material- newspaper
Duracell USB phone charger powered by AA batteries
Instant Hand warmer
6 Ultimate Lithium AA batteries

Space pics and the story of Project Icarus on their site:

http://space.1337arts.com/hardware

The Slashdot post:

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/09/09/13/1712216/Students-Take-Pictures-From-Space-On-150-Budget

So if a couple of uni students can take images of this breathtaking
beauty with virtually no custom built hardware, then expectations for
Lunar Numbat increase somewhat.

Sure what we're attempting is of an order of magnitude more complex,
and the finished product we'll deliver to WLS will need to be well
tested and solid, however some quick and visual examples of the work
we're doing are due.

$150 for images of space seems money well spent!

Cheers,
Marco

[Marco Ostini]

Hello again,

Thank you Project Icarus!
http://space.1337arts.com

They've done many of us a big favour by highlighting the Open goodness of CHDK:

http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK

Along with it's feature list, remote release via USB and scripting is
included; quite handy.

I can easily imagine Canon PowerShot cameras ending up being used in
all kinds of interesting places, some of our making.

Cheers,
Marco

2009/9/14 Marco Ostini <marco....@gmail.com>:

[Jonathan Oxer]

On Sun, 2009-09-13 at 22:03 -0700, Marco Ostini wrote:

> So if a couple of uni students can take images of this breathtaking
> beauty with virtually no custom built hardware, then expectations for
> Lunar Numbat increase somewhat.

A high-altitude balloon has been mentioned several times previously as a
potential test platform for our avionics system, and it makes a lot of
sense. An interesting and low-cost way to do some testing and the
results can be very impressive.

By the way, there are going to be not one but *two* space-related talks
at LCA this year:

https://conf.linux.org.au/programme/schedule/view_talk/50189?day=thursday
https://conf.linux.org.au/programme/schedule/view_talk/50131?day=friday

The second talk looks like an interesting round-up of various "Open"
space technology projects, and the synopsis lead me to the spacehack.org
website that I hadn't seen before. That in turn lead me to this:

http://spacehack.org/project/tubesat-ps-kit

Lots of cool stuff going on.

By the way, Marco, is there any chance you could ship we that throttle
body? The dates for the static testing in Melbourne are getting close
now and I'd like to have a go at interfacing with the control system.

Cheers :-)
--
Jonathan Oxer
Ph +61 4 3851 6600
Geek My Ride! <http://www.geekmyride.org/>

[Jonathan Oxer]

On Mon, 2009-09-14 at 15:40 +1000, Marco Ostini wrote:

> They've done many of us a big favour by highlighting the Open goodness of CHDK:
>
> http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK

I'm quite amused by the fact that the world has got to the point that
people are writing custom operating systems for cameras!

Practical Arduino has a time-lapse camera project in it and I
investigated CHDK and a few other related technologies when I was
writing it up, and discovered that most cameras are remarkably easy to
control externally. It's a tiny and trivial addition to an onboard
microcontroller to include a time-based interrupt to trip an external
camera shutter every X seconds, or if total separation of functionality
is required for reasons of reliability etc it can be retrofitted to any
digital camera with a hardware timer circuit weighing only a couple of
grams. CHDK is nice, but I wouldn't use that as the determining factor
between, say, an expensive Kodak camera weighing 100g more than a cheap
camera of similar specs but totally closed firmware.

[Andrew Barton]

Hi guys,

Just wanted to point out that controlling off-the-shelf cameras is
very much a topic of interest to White Label Space GLXP team.
Particularly we are looking to control a smallish video camera with
image quality that meets the HD video GLXP mission requirements.

AB