Re: [Talk-us] Public Labs/balloon mapping?
Has anyone here used balloon mapping or these tools (or similar ones) who can share experience, pitfalls, etc.? Public Labs is terrific. I think it shares a similar spirit to OSM in trying to demystify mapping, to put cartographic tools into the hands of ordinary people. Last year I tagged along on a weekend excursion to produce a high resolution aerial image of Dolores Park in San Francisco. I wrote that experience up on a blog post, also see below for a link to a Leaflet map of the image (albeit with no cartographic base map for context, sorry.) http://www.somebits.com/weblog/tech/photo/dolores-park-aerial-map.html http://visuallybs.com/maps/balloon/ Those images were taken from a height of 200 or 400 feet. At that height with ordinary cameras you get a very narrow field of view, good for photographing individual people but not so useful for tracing a road network. It's a great technology for taking specific, up-to-the-day images of particular points of interest. One specific tool worth looking into is MapKnitter, web-based software for compositing multiple aerial images, correcting perspective, stitching, etc. Details at URL below, the video is a good intro to how it works. http://mapknitter.org/ I wonder if there's a DIY drone community out there also playing with aerial imagery. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Public Labs/balloon mapping?
I do work with Public Lab and have a fair amount of experience with the balloon mapping tools. I've not used PL tools to bring imagery into OSM, but my colleague at PL, Liz Barry, gave a talk on the topic at SOTM-US this year: http://vimeopro.com/openstreetmapus/state-of-the-map-us-2013/video/68100204 The Grassroots Mapping listserv might be a good place for questions: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/grassrootsmapping (I'm, of course, happy to answer questions, but these folks have been at it longer than me and doubtlessly know more than I do.) Also, Stewart Long, one of the founders of Public Lab, is an aerial imagery wizard and probably knows a whole lot about this: http://publiclab.org/profile/gonzoearth Cheers, Jessi On Mon, Oct 28, 2013 at 11:21 AM, Nelson Minar nel...@monkey.org wrote: Has anyone here used balloon mapping or these tools (or similar ones) who can share experience, pitfalls, etc.? Public Labs is terrific. I think it shares a similar spirit to OSM in trying to demystify mapping, to put cartographic tools into the hands of ordinary people. Last year I tagged along on a weekend excursion to produce a high resolution aerial image of Dolores Park in San Francisco. I wrote that experience up on a blog post, also see below for a link to a Leaflet map of the image (albeit with no cartographic base map for context, sorry.) http://www.somebits.com/weblog/tech/photo/dolores-park-aerial-map.html http://visuallybs.com/maps/balloon/ Those images were taken from a height of 200 or 400 feet. At that height with ordinary cameras you get a very narrow field of view, good for photographing individual people but not so useful for tracing a road network. It's a great technology for taking specific, up-to-the-day images of particular points of interest. One specific tool worth looking into is MapKnitter, web-based software for compositing multiple aerial images, correcting perspective, stitching, etc. Details at URL below, the video is a good intro to how it works. http://mapknitter.org/ I wonder if there's a DIY drone community out there also playing with aerial imagery. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us -- Jessica Breen PhD Student University of Kentucky Department of Geography 1422 Patterson Office Tower Lexington, KY 40506 uky.academia.edu/JessicaBreen ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Public Labs/balloon mapping?
As others have said, balloon mapping is wonderful, it's great, it's awesome, it's everything cool, but the field of vision one gets from a kite or balloon is quite narrow. Planes or satellites are much higher up and so can capture much larger areas, while drones can (baring any legal restrictions) move, so that their field of vision can be as narrow as a balloon (or even less), but it can move, which makes it less of a problem. When capturing a small (or even medium sized area), such as a school, a small park, or a canal or oil spill, balloons are perfect. For a town-sized area, they won't work unless you can get many areas. - Serge On Sun, Oct 27, 2013 at 9:35 PM, Ian McEwen ianmcorvi...@ianmcorvidae.net wrote: Hi; I've been recently looking around http://publiclab.org/, especially at their tools for doing ground-tethered balloon and kite mapping (http://publiclab.org/wiki/balloon-mapping). The bulk of the prose on the site seems to be activism-oriented -- documenting the BP oil spill, Occupy encampments, etc. As you might guess I'm more interested in the potential to use this for OSM, but stories of others doing that seem to be sparse. Has anyone here used balloon mapping or these tools (or similar ones) who can share experience, pitfalls, etc.? -- Ian McEwen ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Public Labs/balloon mapping?
Hi, On 28 October 2013 02:35, Ian McEwen ianmcorvi...@ianmcorvidae.net wrote: Hi; I've been recently looking around http://publiclab.org/, especially at their tools for doing ground-tethered balloon and kite mapping (http://publiclab.org/wiki/balloon-mapping). The bulk of the prose on the site seems to be activism-oriented -- documenting the BP oil spill, Occupy encampments, etc. As you might guess I'm more interested in the potential to use this for OSM, but stories of others doing that seem to be sparse. Has anyone here used balloon mapping or these tools (or similar ones) who can share experience, pitfalls, etc.? I've done some kite photography around the San Francisco Bay area and more recently one session in Seattle, but haven't had time to process stitch any images from within the US. I've been following what Public Lab / grassrootsmapping.org do, and had a chance to fly kite with Jeff Warren and Stuart Long of Public Lab, but as you say their process and tools are designed for activism, perhaps documentation (historial, social, not geographical), and not exactly what we need in OSM. The MapKnitter tool is great for easy stitching but it's difficult to get a precision map from it, although it surely would be a good base for an OSM oriented tool. In theory most of the process can be automated away but there's a shortage of opensource tools for that. Public Lab generally (not always) shoot from low altitudes at high ground resultion, thus covering small areas. It's possible to go up to at least 3000ft so you can actually cover a couple square miles if you allow for a bigger angle than Google Maps etc. which is not so much of an issue for mapping. Going high is difficult technically and possibly legally though, and requires great conditions. I've done some attempts with balloon mapping and many attempts using a cheap DIY RC platform (which is gradually improving) but I've had most success with the kite so far. These same methods (kites, ballons, drones) are used a lot in archaeology with established processes, but mostly use commercial software. Best regards ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Public Labs/balloon mapping?
On the subject of RC and drones: I have been working on building myself a multirotor RC platform this year. One of the ideas behind it (besides just being fun) was to be able to go to some new construction, send it up, grab pictures and then map from them. So far I'm still stuck on the flying it without crashing part. I did strap my GoPro camera to it on one flight. but had it capturing the view, not the ground. You can see the results here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5OdOm4S1cI There is a twist ending. Several twists actually. And some bumps. I'm not sure how high up I went that time but it was approaching the point where it was getting hard to keep track of visually. After that video I got a new flight controller that is much better and might give me more confidence/flexibility. Some LED strips on the arms might help as well. The GoPro or similar cameras have a very wide field of view (up to 170 degrees) so they might be able to capture a decent area even from a few hundred feet up but I'm guessing the distortion will be hard to compensate for, especially at the edges. So the useful field of view will still be kind of narrow. I guess if I ever get something to work, I'll probably brag/blog about it :) Toby On Mon, Oct 28, 2013 at 11:21 AM, andrzej zaborowski balr...@gmail.comwrote: Hi, On 28 October 2013 02:35, Ian McEwen ianmcorvi...@ianmcorvidae.net wrote: Hi; I've been recently looking around http://publiclab.org/, especially at their tools for doing ground-tethered balloon and kite mapping (http://publiclab.org/wiki/balloon-mapping). The bulk of the prose on the site seems to be activism-oriented -- documenting the BP oil spill, Occupy encampments, etc. As you might guess I'm more interested in the potential to use this for OSM, but stories of others doing that seem to be sparse. Has anyone here used balloon mapping or these tools (or similar ones) who can share experience, pitfalls, etc.? I've done some kite photography around the San Francisco Bay area and more recently one session in Seattle, but haven't had time to process stitch any images from within the US. I've been following what Public Lab / grassrootsmapping.org do, and had a chance to fly kite with Jeff Warren and Stuart Long of Public Lab, but as you say their process and tools are designed for activism, perhaps documentation (historial, social, not geographical), and not exactly what we need in OSM. The MapKnitter tool is great for easy stitching but it's difficult to get a precision map from it, although it surely would be a good base for an OSM oriented tool. In theory most of the process can be automated away but there's a shortage of opensource tools for that. Public Lab generally (not always) shoot from low altitudes at high ground resultion, thus covering small areas. It's possible to go up to at least 3000ft so you can actually cover a couple square miles if you allow for a bigger angle than Google Maps etc. which is not so much of an issue for mapping. Going high is difficult technically and possibly legally though, and requires great conditions. I've done some attempts with balloon mapping and many attempts using a cheap DIY RC platform (which is gradually improving) but I've had most success with the kite so far. These same methods (kites, ballons, drones) are used a lot in archaeology with established processes, but mostly use commercial software. Best regards ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
[Talk-us] Public Labs/balloon mapping?
Hi; I've been recently looking around http://publiclab.org/, especially at their tools for doing ground-tethered balloon and kite mapping (http://publiclab.org/wiki/balloon-mapping). The bulk of the prose on the site seems to be activism-oriented -- documenting the BP oil spill, Occupy encampments, etc. As you might guess I'm more interested in the potential to use this for OSM, but stories of others doing that seem to be sparse. Has anyone here used balloon mapping or these tools (or similar ones) who can share experience, pitfalls, etc.? -- Ian McEwen pgpNXSMstQO9a.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Public Labs/balloon mapping?
Ian McEwen ianmcorvi...@ianmcorvidae.net wrote: Hi; I've been recently looking around http://publiclab.org/, especially at their tools for doing ground-tethered balloon and kite mapping (http://publiclab.org/wiki/balloon-mapping). The bulk of the prose on the site seems to be activism-oriented -- documenting the BP oil spill, Occupy encampments, etc. As you might guess I'm more interested in the potential to use this for OSM, but stories of others doing that seem to be sparse. Has anyone here used balloon mapping or these tools (or similar ones) who can share experience, pitfalls, etc.? -- Ian McEwen ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us Friends of friends have done high-altitude balloon photography using weather balloons. This isn't quite the same thing as what you are planning, but I will try to find their contact details. One difficulty of using such photos for mapping, it seems to me, will be determining the downward angle at which the photos were taken, so as to calculate the perspective. -- John F. Eldredge -- j...@jfeldredge.com Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
