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David Fenton (daveff): GB

Home Base: Kelsall, Cheshire, UK

About Me:: Avid aeromodeller for over 30 years. recently developed a passion for photography (2 years), now working on combining both interests.

Website:: loolee.org

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Frodsham Marshes water barrier view

Added Jul 16 2007 by David Fenton.

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Second aerial outing with the N95

So I’ve had my second aerial outing with the N95 phone/air cam. This time the sun was shining at a slightly higher angle than Wednesday’s efforts and using what I learnt from the initial outing made some changes to the N95 phone settings to hopefully improve picture settings.

The previous session had the camera shooting at…

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Posted by David Fenton on July 20th, 2007 at 12:48am — 1 Comment (Add)

Current aerial photography status.

The 2 Gb memory card for the Nokia N95 arrived this morning. The multiplex Cularis has had the wing section near the root modified and a Velcro basket hung underneath for the N95.

Assuming that the N95 stops hanging the photo application when set to shoot at 10 second intervals (hoping this will be fixed with the addition of some…

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Posted by David Fenton on July 18th, 2007 at 2:41pm — 3 Comments (Add)

Getting down and dirty with the Nokia N95

This phone (Nokia N95) is driving me nuts. Setting the camera to capture a sequence causes the camera application to hang after the second image.

I am now getting dirty. I have changed the product code and am flashing a new unbranded set of firmware into the device.
I guess i'm hoping that the operator version (orange in my case) was responsible for the issues, and the unbranding will fix this.

More updates to f…

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Posted by David Fenton on July 18th, 2007 at 2:41pm — 1 Comment (Add)

Camera sequence mode now works!

Woo hoo!

The N95 camera sequence mode now works :)

So if you have an Orange branded N95 and it hangs on the sequence mode, drop me an email and ill give ya the instructions for fixing it (no warranty offered, implied or suggested).

You'll have to be a bit of a nutter though, taking a new phone and stuffing it.

Gone for a test flight...

Posted by David Fenton on July 18th, 2007 at 2:40pm — 1 Comment (Add)

N95 Takes to the air!

I have uploaded a few images taken by the N95 from the air. it's of my village, Kelsall, in Cheshire, UK.

These are really just test shots from the Multiplex Cularis, the N95 is strapped to the wing.

In my rush to try this out (and while there was some light), I just set the camera to 5 mp at a 10 second interval and went for it. unfortunatley, I forgot to increase the ISO of the camera, so most of the images were shot a…

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Posted by David Fenton on July 18th, 2007 at 2:40pm — 6 Comments (Add)

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At 1:18pm on July 17th, 2007, Jeffrey Johnson said…: At 12:24pm on July 17th, 2007, Jeffrey Johnson said…
The certificates stuff in S60 3rd is a pain for everyone. Check here ... http://www.s60tips.com/2006/05/25/installing-self-signed-applications-in-s60-3rd-edition/

The thing is that I don't actually have an N95 device nearby to test right now as we have been working on other devices (N75 in particular) with the external GPSs ... which by the way don't require a cable to the phone, just need to be near enough to do bluetooth wirelessly.

This guy is the serious expert on the internal GPSs of the N95s ... check his blog and code base here ... you can try out his nmea_info.py to see what the internal GPS is doing.

http://gagravarr.livejournal.com/104793.html
http://gagravarr.org/series-60/
http://gagravarr.org/code/

Ed Parsons also has some notes about the internal GPS on the N95

http://www.edparsons.com/?p=502

Truth is that many people have had problems with it, and so we have really used external bluetooth devices for a while because they are much more accurate. Each new firmware update from Nokia improves the situation, but it is still not perfect.

Have fun, and let me know how it goes.

At 12:05pm on July 17th, 2007, Jeffrey Johnson said…: You may have some trouble with the LocationRequestor install due to certificate problems. We have problems every time we reinstall the firmware, and haven't found the perfect solution yet. This affects the use of the internal GPS, but as we usually use an external one so, not a big deal.

At 10:53am on July 17th, 2007, David Fenton said…: Thanks for the info guys.
Ill look into your comments and post an update when it's done. The phone dosent have a memory card yet, though I ordered a 2 gb card yesterday, which, i'm hoping will be here tomorrow.

... gone to look at installing Python and addidional GPS components ...

Dave

At 10:24am on July 17th, 2007, Stewart Long said…: Hi David, so the N95 has this 11ch GPS receiver, it does work, it will keep a fix in the plane after it takes 1-2 min to get first acquisition.
So, its easy to add a small bluetooth gps receiver to the plane in order to get higher precision and accuracy. This one is fairly cheap at 65usd, and it has 32 channels:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16858702003

At 10:16am on July 17th, 2007, Jeffrey Johnson said…: Ok David .. here we go. The first thing you should do is use the normal camera function to take photos in 10 second intervals. For this you dont need us :) ... Next You will need to install the Python for S60 build ... download it here ... http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=154155
you want these files ... PythonForS60_1_4_0_3rdEd.sis (enviro) ... PythonScriptShell_1_4_0_3rdEd.sis (script shell) .. install that on the phone with the Nokia PC Suite ... then you will need to install the Location Requestor API ... http://discussion.forum.nokia.com/forum/showthread.php?t=108657
Then you should make Python and PictEarth directories on the E drive (which should be the micro-sd chip) ... get a 2gb or 4gb if you haven't bought one already ... then put the Python script I sent to your email in the Python directory ... now there should be a menu item in the "Applications" folder of the main menu for Python Script Shell. From there you can run the script on the e:\python directory ... We have a doc on running the program that I will share with you as well.

You may have trouble with the internal GPS (interference, poor positions) in which case you should use an external GPS which will be much more accurate as well. These things can be had cheaply on eBay ... and with this you can run the code on other ... cheaper S60 devices N70, N75, N80 etc ..

Good luck, lets get on IM if you need more direction here. Its not super user friendly at the moment I know.

Anyway I look forward to your pics from the normal camera program at 10 sec intervals. This is what we have always fallen back to as we have developed the code. We are still having problems getting the full 5MP resolution out of the N95.

Anyway, this will get you started ... we will be in touch ... how should we get IM setup? I am ortelius@gmail.com on gtalk my preferred method.

At 2:33pm on July 16th, 2007, Paul Farmer said…: The World is shrinking! Hi Dave,

Looking forward to our Wales DVD!

Paul.

At 6:16am on July 14th, 2007, Jeffrey Johnson said…: Hi David, Glad to have you join us. Great Videos. Keep em coming, and thanks for Geotagging them. We will have a KML feed for Google Earth hopefully by the end of the weekend.

What kind of mobile phone do you use? Interested in flying it with our software if its up for it?

Glad to have you aboard,

Ortelius