Welcome to my Kite Aerial Photography (KAP) Equipment Page
My equipment:
You will find below the description of my KAP rigs.
December 2008
I built a third KAP rig. This time I designed and built it myself. The goal was to make a rig lighter than my previous ones and smaller to
make it easier to carry.
I used aluminium of a smaller gauge and the parts are smaller than before. I also changed my camera for a Canon A590 which is 8megapixels.
With this camera, I can take a picture every 5.5 seconds. This new rig can easily be adapted for different cameras.
The pan and tilt motors are 5Volt geared stepper motors. I prefer stepper motors because they consume less power than servo motors.
They are a little more complicated to drive electronically. I designed the electronic circuit based on the Texas Instruments MSP430 microcontroller. The rig
uses four AA NiMH batteries compared to eight batteries in my previous rig. With four batteries, the rig can run for more than 8 hours non-stop
at 5.5 seconds between pictures.
This new rig has two home position sensors, one for each motor. On power up, both motors are brought to their
respective home position and then move to the programmed angles and start taking pictures. The KAP rig is programmed to take pictures by itself
without a remote control. This is called AutoKAP. I usually program the rig to take 16 pictures per turn continuously. It changes the tilt angle
every turn between two pre-programmed angles.
The microcontroller can be programmed with various parameters through a RS-232 serial port on a computer as shown in the example below:
- Number of pictures per cycle: 1 à 99
- Pan angle #1: -360 to +360 degrees (*)
- Pan angle #2: -360 to +360 degrees (*)
- Tilt angle #1: 0 to 90 degrees (**)
- Tilt angle #2: 0 to 90 degrees (**)
- Delay between pictures: 5.5 seconds
(*) When the difference between the two pan angles is less than 360 degrees, the pan motor will rotate back and forth between the
two programmed angles. If the difference is 360 degrees, the pan motor will turn continously one direction.
The angles are always related to the home position.
(**) After each pan cycle, the tilt angle changes between the two programmed angles.
There are more settings that will be possible to programmed soon and the programming will be done by a wireless connection from a
handheld device with a display. This way, the KAP rig can be reprogrammed on the fly if the wind has changed direction or
the kite height has changed for examples.
Weight with camera: 710g (25oz)
Weight without camera: 457g (16oz)
Photos:
Videos:
February 2005
I built a second KAP rig using aluminium and the help of a friend (thanks to Jean Charles Hébert). I'm still using a Kodak CX7300 3,2megapixel digital camera.
The orientation of the camera is controlled by an electronic circuit with a microcontroller programmed to turn the camera and take a picture every 22,5degrees (16 photos per rotation). After each complete turn, the tilt angle alternate between -30 degrees and -15 degrees from the horizontal. The sequence and movement length can be easily reprogrammed in the software.
The KAP rig uses 8 AA NiMH batteries. The system can take more than 450 photos with the same battery charge and a memory card of 512megabytes.
Weight with camera: 1,48kg (52oz)
Weight without camera: 1,31kg (46oz)
New Functionalities:
- Now uses a servo motor to capture the photos. This permitted to reduce the size of the rig and its weight. Also, the servo motor mechanism is simpler and more reliable than the previous mechanism.
- The tilt rotation is now automatic, which permits to take photos at different tilt angles without bringing down the camera to change the angle.
- The new picavet system eliminates the possibility that the picavet line gets jammed or tangled. This simplifies a lot the installation of the rig to the kite main line.
- The horizontal rotation mechanism is more reliable then the previous one.
June 2004
I built my first KAP rig using wood. The material and the tools available at the time drove me to use wood for my first prototype. I'm using a Kodak CX7300 3,2megapixel digital camera.
The orientation of the camera is controlled by an electronic circuit with a microcontroller programmed to turn the camera and take a picture every 22,5degrees (16 photos per rotation). The sequence and movement length can be easily reprogrammed in the software.
The tilt angle is adjusted manually before launching the camera. To change the tilt angle, the KAP rig has to be brought down.
The KAP rig uses 8 AA NiMH batteries. The system can take more than 750 photos with the same battery charge and a memory card of 512megabytes.
Weight with camera: 2,36kg (83oz)
Weight without camera: 2,19kg (77oz)
Interesting Web sites: