by Olga Filippova
On October 2, 2010 Elphel had participated (remotely) in Russian Open-Source Hardware /mini-conference/ that took place in Saint-Petersburg. Full list of the projects presented are published in Russian
We were also invited and talked about the benefits of Open Hardware for our business, that we have experienced over the 9 years of existence.
The slides from the conference are available on the slideshare site of conference organizer, Alexander Chemeris
We participated over the phone, after an unsuccessful attempt to do video via Ekiga (did not have time to set it up properly), and we don’t use Skype; but at least the sound quality was good. We also had the pleasure to see other presentations, live, on the upstream.tv most of them in Russian, and some in English, like presentation from Arduino and Bruce Perens.
The presentations were very informative and we hope they will be uploaded on upstream.tv since we were getting ready to our talk and could only glance at the others.
by Olga Filippova
Elphel-Eyesis 1
On July 8, we have the first panoramic camera completely assembled and ready for the test ride. The total height is 1300 mm [4′ 3″]; it weighs 10 kg or about 22 lbs . The power consumption is 36W when camera is in operation, measured at the AC (110/220VAC) input. Camera head has eight 5 Mpix Color sensors around and one pointing up, with the full resolution of ~38 MPix (45 MPix before stitching). The data storage box (also waterproof) – at the bottom of the leg contains 3 swappable 2.5″ hard drives 500 GB each, which is enough to record up to 12 hours of images taken at 5 fps (max frame rate) at full resolution. Each image is geotagged via external GPS unit attached through the sealed USB connector.
The 8 high-resolution lenses are arranged very compact (distance between entrance pupils is 29.5mm), which allows for very small parallax. The high-res Fish-eye lens is pointed to the sky.
Camera head is 210mm [8.3″] in diameter , is waterproof, contains 3 Elphel 10353 processor boards and 3 Elphel 10369 extension boards, which provide IDE, SATA, USB, RS232, and other interfaces (only SATA, USB and sync I/Os are used in Eyesis configuration). Nine sensor boards (10338D) are connected through the three 10359A multiplexer boards that provide temporary storage for the images – all 3 sensors attached to the same 10359A board are triggered simultaneously, but data is transferred to the system boards one at a time. (more…)
by Olga Filippova
Eyesis camera shade, before anodising
3 x 10353 processing boards with 3 connected sensors each
The first 3 Elphel-Eyesis prototypes are nearing completion. Even though there were delays from our suppliers we finally received the last remaining parts and can now finish the camera and data storage assembly.
There were concerns that the pole and its attachments could have aerodynamic problems and that the system could be a whistle at higher speeds.
Today we tested the assembled camera shade for acoustical noise while moving at speed 30-55 mph, luckily the tests proved that there was nothing to worry about.
(more…)
