Confluence Surf Session

You might think the South Platte River that runs through downtown Denver is dirty. And you’d be right, which is exactly why I had always avoided kayaking the whitewater drops in Confluence Park. But yesterday, the spring rains had flushed most of the junk way down river (or so I told myself), and the waves were at a perfect level for a few hours of kayak surfing in the Spring sunshine. Have a look at the video and you’ll see why I have a newfound respect Denver’s kayaking scene.

Pole Pedal Paddle

What do you get when you strap a camera to a ski pole, then to mountain bike handle bars, and then kayak one handed so you can film the river? You get my decidedly “recreational” entry in the 2010 Salida Pole Pedal Paddle race and you get a fun, first person view of the race course shown in the video below.

So what if I came in last or second to last place? When and where else can you get the opportunity to ski, mountain bike, and whitewater kayak all in the same day? And when and where can you actually link these three activities together sequentially in a really fun course? April in Salida Colorado, that’s when and where. And that’s exactly what the 3P organizers and around a hundred athletes do each year in this unique event. In case you couldn’t tell from the video, it is a fantastic time and I highly recommend it if you enjoy these sports.

In addition to filming throughout the course, I also carried a GPS in order to mark the route and get an idea of how fast/slow I went. You can get a sense of race course location and my speed in the interactive map below, or you can download the GPX or KML file to view in Google Earth.

History Balloon Photos

I would have to say that recovering the balloon package is my favorite part of launching high altitude balloons. The whole process reminds me a bit of playing neighborhood baseball as a child. Inevitably, the ball would get hit into another neighbors yard or get caught in a tree or someplace inaccessible, and then a small adventure would ensue as we went about trying to get it back. As we get older, our sense of scale and focus changes, and we find less and less wonder in our usual, immediate surroundings. But every time we launch one of these balloons, eastern Colorado suddenly becomes my childhood neighborhood as I set out to search for the camera package with my friends. And every time, it is an adventure.

We do our best to select launch sites and wind conditions that will provide a safe trajectory away from heavily populated areas and airspace. And we label the camera package with our contact information and non-hazardous markings. But even with all that, things don’t always go to plan and we end up confronted with a situation like this!

It turned out that the balloon package landed in a horse corral and the shredded balloon covered the “Non” portion of the “Non-Hazardous” marking. Within 20 minutes of landing, two nice women noticed it and called the police due to the suspicious hazardous markings. Thanks to our trusty SPOT messenger, we made it there before Johnny-Law, and as Ricky Ricardo used to say, we had some esplainin’ to do. We happily shared the purpose of the mission and the joy that we witnessed when the balloon was launched in front of dozens of elementary and middle school children. We even dismantled the package to prove to the officer that we were on the up-and-up, which was sufficient for him to continue on his way. And we finally reviewed the photos with our new friends and promised that we would follow up with an email link to the photos.

A  closer examination of the GPS log showed that the balloon reached a new personal record of 109,000 feet above sea level! Be sure to check out the GPS track file with geotagged photos and the photo album of the best photos.

A Historic High Altitude Balloon

This morning will mark the third flight of the camera/SPOT balloon package to the edge of space in 2010. The flight is another education and public outreach (EPO) opportunity that is taking place in conjunction with the Boulder History Museum. They are working with a local middle school to film and produce a short documentary about scientists in Boulder and Lars and the atmospheric scientists at LASP fit the bill. Or maybe they just wanted some cool pictures of the edge of space. Anyway, below is the map that will update automatically with the balloon’s location after its 9am MDT launch. Enjoy!

UPDATE: This launch even got a press release in the Boulder Daily Camera newspaper!

Tethered Balloon Flight

My interest in flying a tethered balloon with a camera system started back in July of 2006. Since then, I designed and built a sophisticated camera system, purchased a  7 foot diameter helium balloon, and have talked about flying it over Boulder to take aerial photographs. Almost 4 years have passed with enough yak shaving and procrastination for me to vow to finally do this on not one, but two New Year’s resolutions. I can finally and proudly say that I flew the balloon and the camera system over my South Boulder neighborhood and it was a tremendous success!

My initial interest in the subject goes way back to my Master’s Thesis that involved the design of a micro air vehicle control system for DARPA. The justification for the thesis work was that there is a strong need within the military (and other agencies) for visual knowledge of an environment that is best provided by an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). However, UAVs can be difficult to operate, so much research has been invested in developing autonomous UAVs that can operate on their own, which is exactly how I was funded for my research project.

Flash forward to 2006. I no longer live in Boston, but I am still working in the aerospace industry. Instead of designing control systems to fly aerial vehicles, I am designing control systems to point scientific payloads on satellites in earth orbit. I pick up my first issue of Make magazine while visiting my parents and am immediately blown away by the advancements in low-cost, robotic-like electronics that are available to the average hobbyist that used to be top-shelf military grade components. I subscribe to the magazine and request all back issues, which included their premiere issue focused on kite aerial photography. I have an epiphany. Kites can fly above the earth in a relatively fixed location and orientation without any sophisticate control system, which allows people to focus on building camera payloads to take incredible photographs. I am convinced that I have short-circuited all of the work that has gone into UAV control system development. I realize that there isn’t always wind to fly a kite. Duh. I think back to my childhood and remember helium balloons. I am a kid again and having fun with a balloon. It is the answer. I am convinced that the answer is to fly a helium balloon with a camera instead of investing precious time and money on developing sophisticated autonomous UAVs. I research the market and learn that three companies visibly cater to this type of market: Southern Balloon Works, SkyDoc Balloons, and Allsopp Helikites. All of these companies do impressive work and had my epiphany long ago. But they don’t design precision pointing systems for NASA, I do. I convince myself that I can buy a balloon from one of these vendors, build a sophisticated camera payload, and point it better and for cheaper than anyone else using low-cost hobby electronics.

We are now in July 2006. I spend some of my free time furthering research on the topic, ordering a balloon from Southern Balloon Works, buying a Canons S3is camera, buying and learning to work a BasicStamp-based Parallax BoeBot, buying a camera cradle from ServoCity, and ultimately building a pretty nice semi-autonomous gimbaled camera system to fly on the balloon. Of course, there were issues or I wouldn’t be writing this in 2010. The real-time video downlink from the camera had numerous issues. I eventually worked out the kinks between the RC transmitter and the video downlink and wound up with a reliable RC/video system. I also got involved in mentoring a FIRST robotics team which was a valuable experience, but that also ate into my free time for such extracurricular nerdy activities. Ultimately, it came down to priorities and focus. There are a few things I can say with complete conviction and one is that when we make something in our life a priority or if it occupies our focus, it will be done well and it will be done quickly. So although you could say that requirements creep caused me to try to make the system too autonomous or I got caught shaving a yak, when it comes down to it, flying a helium balloon just wasn’t a priority and didn’t occupy my focus for the past two years despite the fact that I really wished it would.

Sometimes, things in life don’t go as planned and we have to accept them for what they are, decide to fight against them, or a little of both. When it came to this balloon project, I would like to think that I went with a little of both. First, I was fortuitous to become friends with Sam and Lars, who have helped me tremendously in literally getting this project off the ground. Second, I made the conscious choice to abandon the lost cause of a BasicStamp controlled “smart” camera system and to pursue a remote controlled camera system that was well within my means. What was amazing was that after making that choice, it only took three weeks to make the adjustments to the system, get my friends onboard with the project, and ultimately fly my gimbaled balloon camera system. You can probably begin to understand now why I am proud of this accomplishment.

Instead of explaining the as-built system in writing, I thought it would be easier to watch it in action. So check out the overview video below.

And now onto the premiere flight of my tethered balloon camera system.

As you can see from the video, I think the first flight of this system went very well. The as-built system functioned as I had hoped, but the balloon proved to be much less stable than I expected. In some ways, that actually makes things more fun, since it provides me with a justification to improve upon the system :-) It may not be the game changing invention that I dreamed of years ago, but I am glad that I dreamed and proud that I had the courage to try to make it come true.

Be sure to check out the photo album to get a sense of the quality of the photos. There are some fun ones in there! The photo below highlights the improved resolution that near earth aerial photography can provide compared to satellite imagery. Also, if you want to see this photo and two others in Google Earth, down the this KMZ file.

Kite Aerial Photography

What to do on a windy April day in Colorado? How about flying a kite high above an office building with a camera dangling precariously on the kite line in a poor man's attempt to take some cool photos? That's exactly what Lars and I did yesterday in my first foray into Kite Aerial Photography (KAP).

I first read about this in the premiere issue of Make Magazine several years ago. With my interest piqued about aerial photography, I began a slow quest that has led me to build a tethered balloon photography rig (still hasn't flown though) and to launch a camera to the edge of space twice so far this year. On the eve of this year, I mentioned the possibility of getting into KAP, so with the windy weather and a CHDK enabled camera, it only seemed natural to give it a go yesterday.

The winds were at least 15-20mph with gusts much higher, so it seemed likely that my kite could lift the weight of the camera. I had never attached any mass to a kite line before, so the first experiment involved wrapping the taught kite line around a carabiner and clipping a wrench to it. The wrench was easily hoisted into the air as it swayed all over the place in the gusty air. Two minutes later and the wrist tether of the camera was clipped to the carabiner and it was up in the air wildly taking photos! Unfortunately, the battery ran out and it was only programmed to take photos once per minute, so back into the lab for battery charging and reprogramming. An hour later, the camera was back up in the air taking photos once every 10 seconds! I quickly walked the line down, reviewed the photos to make sure it was all working, and back up it went on its completely unstable tether to a height at least 200 feet above the ground!

Considering how little effort (and thought) went into this little aerial photography experiment, I would say it went extremely well. We actually got quite a few nice photos, the best of which is an extremely crisp photo of our neighbor CASA with the Flatirons in the background.

Be sure to check out some more photos in the photo album.

Of course, I couldn't leave it at that, so last night I set about building a Picavet suspension to hold the camera level to the ground for the next time we have some nice windy conditions here in Boulder...

On another quick note, this trusty soldier of a camera is going to fly to the edge of space yet again this Friday as part of a documentary being produced by the Boulder History Museum. Let's hope for its safe return!