First images with our Pentax Optio A40

Last Friday Foster and I went out to the Colby soccer field with our Pentax Optio A40 12 megapixel camera to test our remote image firing system. We attached an Infared Prism trigger to our camera and Rx reciever on board of our EPP v-tail hornet. Flipping a switch on our remote control radio triggers the Prism to send a infared signal to the Pentax camera to capture a digital image.



Foster and I testing the Prism trigger with the camera mounted under the wing of the hornet.

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We sent up the plane and took some pictures of the soccer field and I-95. The high winds (20 mph) made it difficult to stabilize the plane for clear pictures, we did manage to get a few good ones though. In the upcoming weeks when we install our autopilot sensor suite onto the plane it should make for much more stable flights (i.e more consistently sharp pictures). The autopilot uses infared thermopile sensors which detect the heat gradient between the sky and land. The autopilot software uses this gradient to stabilize itself in yaw, pitch, and roll attitude directions.

Here's some of the sharp pictures we captured.

From Build Log

From Build Log

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Here's some of the blurry images. We think this was caused by a sudden change in yaw, pitch, or roll of the plane's attitude mid photo capture.

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From Build Log

From Build Log