Discussions

Smartphone for aerial photographs

Posted by Mark Williams on December 1, 2013 at 8:08am

I'm considering using a smartphone to take a series of aerial photos from an APM controlled fixed wing aircraft before stitching them together with something like AgiSoft.

The benefits of smart phones versus a compact camera that I can see are.

1. Smaller and lighter

2. Cheaper

3. Can be programmed

4. Inbuilt GPS

There are some good camera apps that allow shutter speed control with a timed continuous shooting mode.

Does anyone have experience or any insight into trying this?

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Replies

Jerry Cresp July 7, 2019 at 6:27pm

Good luck; please post some pictures.
spagoziak July 7, 2019 at 9:31am

I'm currently offline for a rebuild; the airframe is a skywalker (6 foot foam pusher). I'm migrating APM from the old APM 2.6 legacy hardware to a Beaglebone blue. Quite a learning curve!
Jerry Cresp November 11, 2018 at 3:20pm

True; but with the APM there is so much going on it is good to just set the thing going and not have to worry about it till after the flight.

What are you flying?

spagoziak said:

Heya Jerry,

You're probably right. I'm up in Minnesota. The more I look around, the more obvious it gets that brute force will have to do. It's a shame that this route eliminates much of the intelligence that the APM team wrote in for this very purpose.

Smartphone for aerial photographs

I'm considering using a smartphone to take a series of aerial photos from an APM controlled fixed wing aircraft before stitching them together with s…
spagoziak November 9, 2018 at 5:55pm

Heya Jerry,

You're probably right. I'm up in Minnesota. The more I look around, the more obvious it gets that brute force will have to do. It's a shame that this route eliminates much of the intelligence that the APM team wrote in for this very purpose.
Jerry Cresp November 8, 2018 at 5:39pm

Spag?,

I gave up on trying to trigger any camera from the APM. It became simpler and easier just to set whatever camera you are using to a 3 second interval and let it go. With the capacity of SD cards these days, it is easier to delete the photos you don't want.

Does this help you or are you trying to do something different?

Where are you located?

Regards,

Jerry

spagoziak said:

I see this thread is almost 5 years old... has anyone else made progress on this? I'd like to use my S9 as a camera, but I'd like it to receive commands from APM, probably via an app. This doesn't seem so exotic an idea now, but I can't find much evidence online that anyone has done this yet.

spag

Smartphone for aerial photographs

I'm considering using a smartphone to take a series of aerial photos from an APM controlled fixed wing aircraft before stitching them together with s…
spagoziak November 8, 2018 at 5:14pm

I see this thread is almost 5 years old... has anyone else made progress on this? I'd like to use my S9 as a camera, but I'd like it to receive commands from APM, probably via an app. This doesn't seem so exotic an idea now, but I can't find much evidence online that anyone has done this yet.

spag
Mark Williams December 4, 2013 at 12:40am

Thanks Jerry. That's useful to know. I'm planning to use a galaxy S3 which has a reasonable camera to test this. Would you be able to share a Agisoft stitched image? I'd really like to see the results.
Jerry Cresp December 4, 2013 at 12:37am

I have taken lots of pics with my iPhone 4S from a Skyfun (See pics). There is some 'wave' effect in the pics if the plane rotation is too fast but only in a small % of pics. I use OSnap to control the timing interval. Unfortunately OSnap doesn't store GPS coords but the developers have promised me this in a future release. I have put the pics through Agisoft (and Autopano) with reasonably good results without ground control points.
I have even had to use the 'find iPhone' app to successfully retrieve a fly away. Not fun.
What else do you need to know?
image.jpg

https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3692892957?profile=original
John Butkus December 3, 2013 at 9:36pm

My insight would be to backup your contacts before throwing your phone into the air. ;)