Hasta La Gadget!

In a quest to get the perfect shot, Eric Austin, a Texas-based videographer, found a neat way to fuse a remote controlled helicopter and a Canon DSLR camera so he could shoot aerial videos easily and get the kind of footage that would otherwise be difficult to pull off.

“I took a hobbyshop helicopter and modified it to hold a camera, so I can get low altitude, close and tight aerial shots,” Austin told Wired.com.

An amateur videographer turned pro, Austin got interested in remote-controlled photography just four months ago.

“As I did more photos and videos, I realized I could develop a niche where I could use the advancements in technology to provide the kind of photos most people can’t get easily,” he says.

Austin is one of the many hobbyist photographers who are finding ways to use drones and remote-controlled helicopter toys to get a more attractive camera angle. Wired magazine editor-in-chief Chris Anderson helms a site called DIY Drones where users have found a way to use unmanned aerial vehicles to do aerial photography. Last year, New York City photographer Anthony Jacobs showed a helicam built using a German helicopter rig called MikroKopter. Jacobs used his helicam rig to shoot videos of neighborhooods in the city.

Austin, who has a website devoted to his RC helicopter videography, says he wanted to do something similar and offer HD-quality video and photos.

That’s why, he says, he decided to create a rig that would be reliable and produce the kind of footage that could be used by professionals. And as this clip shows, the video can be interesting.

Aerial video with a Canon 5D , 7D helivideo.com from Eric AUSTIN on Vimeo.

So far, Austin has helped shoot footage for TV shows including History Channel’s Sliced series.

Austin started with a remote-controlled helicopter called Align T-REX 700 and modified it to carry a special frame and camera mount. He tweaked the landing gear for the helicopter, covering it with a bright pink foam from the “noodles” used in swimming pools.

“The color stands out when I am flying the helicopter outdoors,” says Austin. “And if I crash into the water, my whole equipment won’t go to the bottom. It will be ruined, but at least I will get my gear back.” Austin says he hasn’t crashed his helicopter yet, but the foam ensures that in case of a hard landing, the equipment is less likely to completely fall apart.

He adjusts the camera’s settings when it’s on the ground and presses the Record button right before takeoff. For still images, Austin says he uses an external timer that activates the shutter every few seconds.

To create his flying video rig, Austin says he spent hours on the online discussion forums at the Helifreak.com website.

“I didn’t know anyone to talk to,” he says. “And then realized the only place to go was online where people were discussing this.”

One of the more challenging shoots that Austin has done with his helicam was flying over a cliff that was about 25 feet high with a river below. And he didn’t crash the copter.

“The probability that a crash will happen is there, but so far, I have been careful,” he says.

To download video, Austin has set up a 5.8-GHz video downlink feed using an on-board wireless transmitter.

All of this didn’t come cheap. Austin estimates the entire rig cost him about $15,000. But for those at home, who want to do something similar, he says there are cheaper alternatives.

“I went for the best and most expensive components because I didn’t want to risk it failing mid-air,” he says. “But you can get an RC helicopter for about $400 and put a point-and-shoot camera on it.”

See Also:

• Helinet Brings Live Aerial Video to Cops’ Smartphones
• World’s cheapest aerial video platform
• High-Tech Tomb Hunter Finds Unmarked Graves for a Living
• Aerial Stereoscopy Photography
• Flying Copter-Cam Swoops Over New York City
• They’ll Ride a Balloon Into Space

Photo/video: Eric Austin

[via DIY Photography]

Laptopogram. An old-new name for a marriage of ancient and modern technology. It works like this: take a piece of photo-sensitive paper (if you can find a darkroom supply store that is still trading), press it to the screen of your computer and switch that screen on for an appropriate interval (probably less than ten seconds depending on brightness). Splosh the paper through developer, stop and fixer baths, turn on the lights (you did turn out the lights, right?) and you’re done.

This wonderful practice was named by nerd-tographer* Aditya Mandayam, who presses the paper to the screen of his IBM R51 Thinkpad and runs a (Linux) command-line script to blip the screen on and off.

All prints were developed on Ilford Ilfospeeed RC Deluxe 5 Glossy paper using Tetenal Neofin Blau with water as a stop bath and a fixer of unknown provenance.

Photo paper registers a negative of the image projected upon it: more light darkens the paper. Normally you would project a negative film frame down on to the photo-paper, but fortunately modern computers are adept at image processing and can invert a picture easily. You can also “dodge and burn” parts of the image before printing.

These photos are more like contact prints or photograms, but the results are something else entirely. This is probably helped by the Tetenal Neofin, which is a B&W film developer, not meant for paper. Perhaps by keeping the screen as dim as possible (to minimize light from the shadows) and by using a proper paper developer, the whites would stay a little whiter. Still, I’m pretty tempted to get back into the darkroom, although I’m almost certain the chemicals under the sink are out of date by now.

Laptopogram [Tumblr via Kottke]

*Another made up term, this time mine. Sorry.

Manufacturers want you to recycle old gear when you upgrade, but Kyle Wiens would prefer that you keep your old gadgets and fix them yourself.

Wiens, CEO of repair company iFixit, has remade his gadget-repair website into a collaborative wiki with the goal of crowdsourcing repair manuals for every type of device imaginable. He calls the movement “Repair 2.0.”

“I don’t think we can continue manufacturing new things, consuming them and throwing them away at the rate that we do,” Wiens told Wired.com. “What we’re doing is we’re allowing people to join together and help each other save money, help the environment and care for those things.”

Previously, iFixit was a repair site that posted step-by-step disassembly instructions for gadgets posted by iFixit staff. The company makes money by selling parts (like replacement iPhone screens) that intrepid fixers can use in their repair projects. Later, iFixit implemented a gallery tool for anybody to post an illustrative teardown manual for their gadgets (which Gadget Lab helped introduce with a Sony teardown contest).

Now, the site has repurposed itself into a full-blown wiki for repair manuals, where contributors can collaborate on repair instructions in real time. For each product, iFixit contributors can create individual manuals with instructions for specific repairs (e.g., a manual for fixing the Wi-Fi module in a MacBook, or a manual for replacing a battery in a Samsung cellphone). All the manuals on iFixit will be free and noncopyrighted.

The DIY-repair concept is derived from a longstanding culture of gadget teardowns. Typically, when manufacturers ship products, they don’t publicly disclose full details about their internal parts. Some hardware geeks disassemble electronics to learn more about their components and the evolution of industrial design. IFixit has been an extremely popular site hosting teardowns immediately after a major gadget is released.

Wiens said the next step was to make teardowns beneficial for the environment and consumer culture by repurposing them into easily digestible repair guides. He added that fixing gadgets only increases their value.

“To some extent things have lost their soul, and I think repairing things yourself re-injects some soul and connects you to the stuff that you own,” Wiens said.

See a video of Wiens’ introduction of iFixit 2.0 below.

See Also:

• Gallery: Sony Gadget Teardown Porn
• Teardown Reveals iPhone Camera Could Fit the iPod Touch — Barely
• If You Love Your Gadgets, Tear Them Apart
• iPad Dissection Reveals Its Secret Powers

Photo courtesy iFixit

We have seen twittering toasters, toilets and robots. Now an old-fashioned cuckoo clock gets a makeover so it can wirelessly connect to the internet and display status messages from Twitter.

Haroon Baig, an interface and interaction designer, added a display on the front of a cuckoo clock so it can announce Twitter updates with the charm of a mechanical cuckoo popping out of the timepiece.

Baig modified the innards of the clock, which has a touchscreen display with a controller board and a Wi-Fi dongle. It also uses Chumby, a hardware open source platform with a Linux operating system.

A custom-built widget connects to the Twitter API and receives new tweets. The mechanics of the cuckoo is controlled by the Arduino Board.

The clock can monitor any twitter stream or search. But it has been configured to react on self-referenced tweets. If any tweet mentions “TwitweeClock,” the tweet displays on the built-in screen and triggers the cuckoo mechanism.

As Baig’s video shows, its a fun mod to do. The Twitter-enabled cuckoo clock’s tweet can be found at @twitweeclock.

Twitwee Clock from Haroon Baig on Vimeo.

A close-up of the innards of the cuckoo clock:

See Also:

• Toaster, Toilet Lead Appliance Invasion of Twitter
• Clive Thompson on How Twitter Creates a Social Sixth Sense
• With Tweetie Acquisition, Twitter Locks On Mobile
• Listen to ‘World’s First Twitter Album’

[via Make]

San Francisco’s football team may have its share of detractors, but in a face-off against a robotic kicking machine, Niners placekicker Joe Nedney came out on top.

Nedney was pitted against a 340-pound titanium robot called Ziggy. The event was billed as a man-vs.-machine battle in a leadup to Robogames, a robot competition event that will be held this weekend in San Mateo, California. Nedney kicked a football 45 yards while Ziggy, the robot, failed to clear the goalposts in two attempts at that distance. For a detailed rundown of the play, check out Wired Playbook’s coverage.

Ziggy is no lightweight, though. A star in the robot world, it has a titanium-covered armor plate and has been a gold medal champion at Robogames for three years in a row. Ziggy’s heft and power have made it one of the most powerful amateur robots built. For instance, in one video, Ziggy tosses a washing machine around as if it were a ball.

In practice sessions, Ziggy has been able to kick a ball over 60 yards. But that was on a concrete surface with no headwind.

The football field’s grass surface meant that a major portion of the energy released by Ziggy’s pneumatic arm ended up driving the robot deeper into the ground rather than providing thrust to the ball, explains the BotJunkie.com website.

But all that’s just excuses. For those keeping score, Nedney is the winner — and humans rule.

For now, at least.

See below for a video of the Nedney vs. Ziggy kick-off, plus a closer look at Ziggy.

Photos: (Evan Ackerman/BotJunkie.com)