On Wed, September 23, 2009 19:44, Robert Scott wrote: > On Wednesday 23 September 2009, paul youlten wrote: > >> How be difficult would it be to adapt their low-cost approach to give >> more useful images for mapping? > > Very. Getting steady images from a balloon would be very difficult, even > with a gimbal. The payload swings like a pendulum. You also wouldn't be > able to control where the balloon went. You would have a very hard time > fighting against wind with an RC blimp.
You could stabilise the camera with a gyroscope, spinning around a vertical axis. It would consume power to keep it spinning, and, by definition, it would add weight, but if the camera was pointing straight down when the gyroscope was started, then the gyroscope would tend to keep the axis vertical. And you wouldn't need to care where the balloon went, as long as it went somewhere you hadn't mapped yet. Or something. A _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk