May 26, 2011
For ages I've wanted to build a portable "Street view" rig that I can use to image some of the walking/tramping tracks around New Zealand
I've ordered 5 GoPro Hero Naked cameras to build a rig similar to the one described on diy-streetview.org/. As an itervalometer I'm using an Arduino compatible Seeeduino-Stalker.
Connected to the Stalker is a , GPS, digital compass, 2 line LCD, and a temperature sensor to go along with the Stalker's Real Time Clock and MicroSD card slot
The Arduino is updating the LCD continuously, with the Heading, Time, Temperature and GPS Lat, Lon, Altitude. For the one second before and after taking a photo is continuously records the Time, Heading, Acceleromter and GPS data to the SD card. Later I'll use this to orient the photo and do tilt compensation if needed.
I may remove the 3 Axis Analogue Accelerometer that I'm currently using and replace it with a 6 DoF Board instead so I have gyro and accelerometer data for more accurate tilt compensation.
The next few steps from here are:
- Make a gimbal mount for a hiking pack so it sits upright above me.
- Strip the cameras down to bare minimum and mount with Arduino.
- Work out how to sync all the cameras, preferably via the Hero Bus with 4 cameras in slave mode. Have the Arduino trigger the Master.
- Take it all for a walk to get some real images and data.
- Automate the stitching process.
- Build a website to display all the images.
- Launch the website and make all original photos and data available under Creative Common NZ license.
- Walk the rest of New Zealand :-)
Cost to date (inc GST):
5 x GoPro Hero HD Naked camers 1909.70
5 x 16Gb Class 10 SDHC cards 224.25
1 x Seeeduino Stalker 64.00
1 x 2Gb Micro SD Card 10.24
1 x CR2032 RTC Battery 2.50
1 x 3 Axis Accelerometer 38.00
1 x Digital Compass 55.00
1 x 6 AA battery holder 2.50
12 x Rechargable AA batteries 75.00 (recently purchased for head lamp)
1 x Holux GPSlim236 GPS already on hand
0.5 x MicroUSB cable 2.00
---------
Total so far $2,383.19
---------