Posts Tagged ‘Photography’
See the awesome Nao 1337 pictures taken by Daniel Seth Pagel at the robot film Festival. Learn more about this awesome photographer at danielsethpagelstudios.blogspot.com or visit his official website www.dspstudios.org
Nao 1337 and Carlitos Downtown
We went downtown Montreal the other day with Nao 1337 and shot some pictures, this was mainly an exercise in vanity. See the resulting photo gallery below.
I used the automated panoramic photography rig (or Panoramaker, for short) in order to make some panoramas here in Montreal.
After having the rig working, I went out on my bike with my tripod, my laptop, my digital camera and the panoramic photography ri. I decided I wanted to capture the sunset at Mount Royal but when I was halfway there, I noticed that the sun became completely covered by clouds. So I decided to shoot some other panoramas instead.
Here is a nice 360 deg view of the Maison Van-Horne Shaughnessi (a.k.a. The Canadian Centre for Architecture). This building is located here. Keep in mind that you can click on the title in order to see the panorama full-screen.
| Title: | Maison Van-Horne Shaughnessi |
| Description: | A 360 deg panorama shot from the sidewalk. |
When watching carefully, it is possible to notice a little parallax error near the base of the descriptive plate in front of the building. I could have corrected this but I noticed it too late and I am extremely lazy. You can also see some cars blending with their surroundings as Hugin, the panorama stitching program, tries to make sense of a changing scene (with cars passing by).
This is a panorama of Place Ville-Marie taken at the central fountain.
| Title: | Place Ville-Marie |
| Description: | A 360 deg panorama shot at the Place Ville-Marie fountain. |
The parallax errors in this one are much more significant, but then again, laziness got the best of me. They are mainly caused by the fact that the camera was not perfectly flat on the tripod when shooting this.
If you want to know what are the tools used to create these panoramas, please read my previous posting on Making Panoramas.
As promised before, here is the Python script that runs my panoramic camera hardware. It is a very quick prototype and is by no means intended for widespread use since it requires manual calibration. Nevertheless, it might be very useful to those seeking to learn how to position the servos or control a digital camera through Python.
This script requires my Pololu library and includes some codes from here in order to control the camera. Besides the basic requirements of lib_pololu, the script also requires gPhoto. If you are running Linux, you most likely already have it but in case you do not, you can install it through your favourite package manager or by using the console (e.g. for Ubuntu/Debian):
sudo apt-get install gphoto
If you are using some other OS, you can download gPhoto from here.
The Code
Again, many thanks to RobotShop who provided the hardware that made this project possible.
Read the follow up posts: Panoramaker, where I expose the software, and Automatic Panoramas in Montreal, where the final result can be seen.
I have finally completed my second project sponsored by RobotShop. I apologize for the immense delay, I really missed my promise of rolling out a new project every two weeks. Let’s just say that I had a lot going on lately and I could barely keep up with my obligations, let alone blogging or building new projects.
Place Ville-Marie Panorama
This time, I built a panoramic camera. My main objective was to have a platform that can be used with pretty much any camera and that can produce panoramas with a minimum of work. If there is enough interest from the public and if this prototype is well received by the DIY community, I’m planning to produce (and hopefully sell) kits that would include all the parts to build this device.
Panoramic Camera Mount
The first step was to put together the ServoCity Pan and Tilt system. This took away much of the building work since it is really simple to put together in no time at all. Nevertheless, I applied some modifications to it: I discarded the bottom plate that should be attached to the panning servo (since I am using a larger winch servo that would not fit otherwise), and I drilled a hole on the top plate in order to be able to fasten the camera to the rig. Note that I also included a little piece of neoprene that was lying around in order to prevent the bottom of my camera from getting scratched.
The mounting hole for the camera must be placed so that the lens’ pupil is at the centre of rotation. This way, the horizontal rotation axis will be close to the no-parallax-error point (or whatever it is called) of the camera and will minimize the parallax errors.
Then, I used an old heat sink as the main structure since it is sturdy and basically free. I used the trusty Dremel to adapt it and cut the proper holes and slots in order to mount all the remaining pieces. The pieces to be mounted on the aluminum plate are the battery holders, the Pololu servo controller, and the winch servo motor. (or whatever it is called
I encapsulated the Pololu servo controller in a small plastic container I got from for free while on a trip with my girlfriend to the beauty/ soap/cream shop. I also used two 2-AA battery holders in order to provide power for the servo motors. I used 29000 mAh NiMH rechargeable batteries that gave me several hours of autonomy. In order to connect the battery holders to the controller, I soldered a two-position female header and insulated the leads with heat-shrink tubing.
I used almost exclusively cable ties to tie everything on the aluminum plate except for the winch servo motor that I screwed in and the long nut that was also screwed in place (after being drilled sideways). I also had to drill the bottom aluminum face in order to allow for the tripod screw to be inserted into the nut.
Panoramic camera in action
This first prototype requires a laptop to be operated, which can be a little annoying. I plan to use my EeePC in the immediate future and an embedded computer for an eventual commercial kit. It basically works as follows:
In order to control the hardware, I use a python script that uses my Pololu library and gPhoto in order to operate the servos and the camera respectively. I chose gPhoto since it supports a very wide range of cameras and it is very easy to use.
For now, taking a full 360 panorama takes about 15 minutes. This is a very long time and is mostly due to the fact that my script was hastily put together without care about the performance and in very little time. I will, very soon, post a cleaner version of the code, as well as all the panoramas I took properly processes and in full format, similarly to what I did with my San Francisco panoramas.
RobotShop.com
I would like to thank the great people at RobotShop for providing the Pololu Micro Serial Servo Controller, the ServoCity SPT200 Direct Drive Pan & Tilt System, and the Hitec HS-785HB Winch Servo Motor. This is the second (and hopefully not the last) project they sponsor here at Carlitos’ Contraptions. Without their help, I would have never been able to afford any of the materials (except for those that come straight from the garbage as usual).
They have also being very patient and understanding about my unexpected delay in rolling out this project.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
