After building a preliminary design for holding the payload we assembled it with the camera installed and did some drop tests off the deck and roof. We experimented with putting a wing on the back of the foam container that would angle the camera down toward the ground after the balloon pops to get some different shots on descent.
While testing, we put the camera in video mode and got footage of the payload falling nose first into the ground. The camera survived all tests, while the foam broke in one spot at the nose on the first impact. We may design the nose to break or deform even easier to absorb more impact and hopefully save the electronics inside.
To start/stop the camera we put a hole in the foam so we could use a tool to press the camera's shutter button.
We had a couple hiccups on the embedded camera's video. The camera's record mode got out of sync causing us to record the opposite of what we wanted to record. After that got sorted out we got some good video. However on the last drop the camera was powered off after opening the package and the lens had not retracted. We're unsure of how/why the camera powered off.
Update (10/16/2010 - Kopper):
Here is a video of a few flights from the camera's point of view:
No comments:
Post a Comment