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Geotagging Pictures From NEX 5 Using APM Planner and Pixhawk

Posted by David Locascio on August 18, 2014 at 9:54am

I'm having some issues getting the correct altitude value to write onto the picture EXIF file. I seem to be getting relative altitude as my output onto the photo. Further, it is not outputting any info to the first 4 photos, and I'm getting massive errors in Photoscan (several tens of thousands of meters).

I'm using the tlog with a 307.8 second offset. CAM message offsets are 1, 4, 3, 5, 2, 8, 7, 6; GPS are 2, 3, 9, 6,  7, 8 from left to right top to bottom in Mission Planner 1.3.7 Build 1.1.5307.24027.

I am waiting on an IR trigger and plan on triggering based on distance, but would like to get this working in the meantime. Let me know if you need some of my pictures (100 photo set @ 7 MB each).

Thanks for any help!

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Tags: geotagging, mission, nex5, planner
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Replies

  • Eddie Weeks July 1, 2015 at 6:24pm

    I am having the same problem...  I run a mission with "DO_SET_CAM_TRIGG_DIST" set to 10..

    Copter takes lots of pictures... but when I download the .log file... there are NO CAM messages in the log file..

    See attached...  I am using a servo to take the picture...  Even when I set "DO_SET_CAM_TRIGG_DIST" manually

    and walk around with the copter.. it takes pictures, which is perfect...  My Sony Nex camera is 10x better then the

    two geo-tagging point and shoot cameras I just bought and returned... So I really want to use the Sony.

    Don't know where to go next.

    Eddie Weeks

    www.jetlens.com

    2015-07-02 01-10-55.log

    Aerial Imagery
    Aerial Photography Louisiana
    • Developer
      Michael Oborne > Eddie Weeks July 2, 2015 at 4:37pm

      try enabling more logging, LOG_BITMASK is the param you want

      • Eddie Weeks > Michael Oborne September 22, 2015 at 12:14pm

        >try enabling more logging, LOG_BITMASK is the param you want

        Yes... I did this.. and Now I CAM messages... this fixed my problem..

        Eddie

      • Jacko > Michael Oborne July 2, 2015 at 8:17pm

        I you want to upload a param file we can see if its set OK.
        I still struggle with bitmasks if in doubt just enable cam logging in isolation and work from there.

        Let me know if you need help to set this.

        • Jacko > Jacko July 2, 2015 at 8:20pm

          Sorry to jump topic Michael, but while I have your attention, I'm busy trying to get alternate lanes to work in Mission planner but it seems to be broken! I'm assuming Its my duff grasp of how it works as usual!

          Any advise on how this works? Its a great feature if I could only set it up right

  • Jacko August 23, 2014 at 6:48pm
    What time interval is occurring between images? I ask as I think camera may not have time to process raw image file between exposures. Any comments on this? Thanks.
  • Karthik August 21, 2014 at 3:57am

    Dear all,

    I am using APM 2.5 and i have captured aerial images using a RICOH-GR III and a servo trigger mechanism for triggering the shutter. I created a survey mission and used CAM_TRIGG_DIST as the trigger method. After the flights, i got the images alright but to geo-reference it, i could not find any CAM messages in my tlog files to do a CAM Message synchro. Pls assist. I tried downloading the dataflash log from my APM and could not figure out which one is from my flight. I found the one which is closer to my flight time but it has only 6 CAM messages in it whereas there are 127 images captured.

    2014-08-21 11-22-42.tlog

    2014-08-21 11-37-27.log

    • Yannick > Karthik August 22, 2014 at 7:42am

      Hey,

      i don't understand why it is not logged complete. Try to delete all old logs on your APM, set the CAM_TRIGGER_DISTANCE to a low value, maybe 10 meters. You can walk along the street and create a nice log and some bad pictures. Thats maybe easier than flying a mission.

      @David,

      the IR Trigger is not good for taking these pictures. I have also two of them for a nex but they have a big shutter delay. -> Impossible to get very good results.

      • wrostek > Yannick September 22, 2015 at 11:26am

        Hi Yannik,

        I was on the way to move from my IR trigger of my NEX-5R to
        solder cables inside the cam bridging the shutter button.
        A tricky operation and I stepped back for now. I assume
        it will help to come down from 0.8s delay to about 0.1s.

        But when I read this thread I recognized that it will help
        of course but I don't know the influence on post-processing.

        I have only initial experience with Agisoft photoscan.

        You mentioned 'very good results' but several components contribute.
        The ublox on my plane will not provide very exact GPS info.
        The INU values for the cam pointing are not exact as well.
        And finally shutter delay will not be zero in the end.
        Some recording delays might be addressed by interpolation.
        But in total I feel an aggregations of not very exact data.

        In contrast if I spend effort in generating very precise GCPs
        down to a few cm accuracy this seems to be more worth the effort.

        Can you give me an idea where improving the precision on
        the plane side will take effect in post-processing for 3D-models?

        thanks in advance
        Wolfgang R.

        • iskess > wrostek September 22, 2015 at 11:57am
          Converting from an IR trigger to a hard wired one will improve reliability, but it won't increase the triggering speed if you are already getting .8 secs. The Sony NEX is not capable of sustaining triggering rates faster than that once the buffer is full.
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