I guess this is why they call it research
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Starting off, this week has been spent reading and studying up on the current tech thats useful for us. The pun is fully intended in the title of this as this is maybe the 5th time I’ve had to look at all the new technology and advances made (damn you Moore’s law).
Looking into a more advanced LiDAR system had me sifting through nearly all viable models that fit our budget. Sample rate, beam power, light shielding, and mass were a few of the deciding factors that went into looking at different models.

  • A high sample rate allows for the LiDAR to be traveling faster and not suffer a loss of resolution.
  • The power output of the laser beam itself is important to get greater distant, our original system only had a usable distance of ~1.5m above the ground in broad daylight.
  • light shielding, though it can be added later, is best done built in as close to the laser output as possible. The shield itself allows through only the recognisable light of the laser receiver and blocks out as much UV light as possible.
  • Because the goal is to have the LiDAR mounted on the UAS mass needs to be taking into consideration.

After making up a list and handing it over to Charlie to look over he submitted it to the scientific equipment fund.

I also took the time this week to put together a new abstract for our research. Since first starting on the research our knowledge and capabilities have expanded drastically and I felt our abstract should reflect this. As of today we submitted to be a part of the Earlham College “Natural Sciences Division Undergraduate Research Poster Conference.”

May Term, LiDAR
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Most of my time of late has been spent working on the Icelandic Field Studies May Term proposal. It’s overdue. Nic and I have been talking about LiDAR, we continue to think this is a promising technique to use at Skalanes.

Back into the swing of things
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Now a few weeks into the new semester its time to stop procrastinating and get back to work!

Ive started off by essentially doing what seems like mass updating of hardware, software, firmware, etc. The DJI drone system and ground control software both had to be brought up to date. Initially there were a lot of errors in getting them talking to one another again but as of Wednesday this week they are fully happy and working properly. I’ve also taken the chance to update the plug-ins and various parts of the website. Ive also made accounts on the blog for Vitalii and Niraj who will be joining us by working on some of the back end coding.

In an effort to stream line our massive photo cache I’ve copied all photos onto our media server here on campus to allow us to situate things. After talking with Charlie and Erin we have decided to sort initially by day and then by capture device. This means though that we have to map all photos to their correct day which has proved to be more difficult then I thought… If the EXIF data on the images doesn’t contain a date – the date is just set to be the most recent “creation date” which means when I copied them. Thats left me and Erin with a whole lot of images that need to be sorted and sifted by hand still. Im also still finding places where images are stored, such as the google drive, etc, and have been working on getting all of those to the server as well. Its sort of like a  big game of cat and mouse and is tedious at best.

With Niraja and Vitalii joining us I have also been doing my best in catching them up to speed on all the projects and details there in. Much of this involves working with the UAV images and how to post process them. Much of this is trying it out on proprietary software and then figuring out to best do it in large batches and with open source programs. Ive most recently been trying to figure out if its possible to get a 3D topographic image without needing to apply a LIDAR point cloud layer. While not as accurate it would certainly be quick and would be used more as an approximation.

As time becomes available, Ive also started going through all the video footage that we have saved and started to throw together a very (VERY) rough storyboard for the documentary. Im hoping to have a solid chunk of time this weekend to work on this a bit more. Really I’m just focused on getting some generic shots worked together so that we can use them as filler for voice over and context.

As things move along I’ll keep posting! Cheers!

And we are off, again…
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The new academic season has started and the field science/studies group is getting underway. After our work in Iceland this past summer (see the blog, pictures, playlist, etc.) we have a bunch of data to organize and analyze with various toolchains. Working on this now are Craig, Nic, Erin, Niraj, and Vitalii. Kristin and I are also working on Android and platform development together. At some point they will make posts describing what they are working on, maybe even updated regularly… Most of my time so far this fall has been spent on the field studies/May Term proposal, helping Vitalii and Niraj get started, and tomorrow I’m going to put on-off switches on a couple of ambiance platforms so they are easier to work with. I still can’t fathom how we didn’t have those from the get-go.

Blog 7/5/16: Drones, LiDAR, dirt
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This is now our 5th day at Skalanes and were are all feeling rather settled in and have our workflows… er… flowing. We were awoken to a bit of surprise today, the tent was actually warm! This is the first day of being in Iceland where a jacket wasnt necessary without having to hike a volcano. With hardly a cloud in the sky the weather was perfect for taking arial images with the UAVs. Oli, Rannveig, and Bjarki took some of out (at different times) to explain the archeological dig sites and what areas would be helpful to have high resolution mappings of the area. I did an initial fly over survey of the known archaeological site. Later is post processing I started to look into tweaking the photos to highlight ground structures, cancel out water reflections, etc. Its all looking promising. Unfortunately, its so bright that the sun would mess with the LiDAR’s receiver and so I will have to wait for the sun to “set” before going out. This will probably be around midnight. Tara continues to work with the soil samples taken and devising ways to process the soil.

Almost out the door
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This week was very busy. First of all I pretty much finalized the maps we have here, cutting, taping, folding and laminating them so they are ready for use in the field.

We have field day Friday where we split into two groups and collected data at several points. For this I sketched maps of the area that included all roads but only a few labels in order to do a little navigation practice while collecting data.

visualisation and flight
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This past week has been a busy week. I spent a great deal of time working with Erin on the UAV Lundi where we were able to do test flights in fairly heavy wind, get used to the camera system, learn how to stitch images together. I got a chance to look into some of the customisable flight controls such as “point of interest”, “follow me”, and “waypoints.” The waypoints is particular interesting as It should allow us to define flight plans, save them, and then have Lundi fly them in the same way on its own. Most of the custom commands are going to come from a “ground control station” which is just an input form a laptop. I spent time looking into open source ground stations that have already been created but didn’t find anything exactly like I wanted. In order to remedy this Ive started coding up a few things using the DJI api to either create our own standalone ground station or add it into an open system. The goal is to have the ability to click waypoints on a map and have the drone fly the path with user defined specifications.

I’ll update shortly about LiDAR visualisation and information. Im working on creating a nice image and detailed instructions on whats going on!

 

Field soil platform
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I spent some time yesterday resurrecting the soil humidity & temperature and high temperature water platform that Ivan, Kristin, and I originally made (and re-made) in 2013 and 2014. I was able to find all the parts, re-assembled it, found an Arduino sketch in the Sparkle Share folder, and viola it worked. The wiring and sketch are documented here.

IMAG0446

Back to list management…

Data update
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This past week, I worked on getting some database views ready that would show us the results for the sampling day. This is so each evening in Iceland, we’re able to effectively and quickly QA the data we have and check to make sure what we have matches with what we should have. This is now set up so that we have views of data from the last 24 hours for both streaming and readings tables in the database. The views are currently set up so we can see the recordtime, latitude, longitude, elevation, sensortype and sensor value for the streaming table. The readings table view displays the time, site, sector, spot, sensortype and value for the last 24 hours.

I also finished up the ER diagram for the data model as it now stands in our database with a couple of changes from the last iteration.

I began working on learning enough about flask this week to start adapting the viz tool to work with the current data model, and expect to make more headway on that this week. I also started writing up and documenting all our tables and why we chose to structure them the way we did, along with explanations for the relationships between the tables and how we chose those.

‘Stitching’ Photos and Other Adventures
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Charlie and Kristin gave me data from the last trip to Iceland on soil samples and the archaeology site. The data had XY coordinates in it so I was able to bring it into QGIS as a csv and visualize them on the map of skalanes. I did the same with the coordinates for the fox dens that Oli gave us. I was able to check with Oli, fix what needed to be fixed and confirm their locations.

I had a lot of communication with Anna from TREK Iceland this week. I confirmed with her what our needs and we finally have everything straitened out. I just need to hear back from her on prices and on a guide confirmation (I asked for Gummi however said that we are flexible if need be it would just be easier with him).

Next was a lot of work this week on stitching together photos taken by the drone. Nic and I went out quite a few times this week to both practice flying and getting pictures of the area at different heights. We took series of photographs from 10, 30 and 50 meters and I tried to stitch them together. Stitching them together is not very difficult when in reference to just each other because I just georeference points relative to points on other photos. The difficulty is placing them in relation to the world. I tried using google earth images to reference them but I am beginning to thing that taking a GPS point of known features in the area and using those as reference points may be more successful. I want to try this out this week.

This weekend I worked on installing QGIS onto the macbook going to Iceland and I brought over the map I have made so far. The only part we need to be careful about here is that any layer in a map you are using must be sourced to a place that that computer can access (eg. that computer). We can change the source but I had to individual make sure each layer was included separately when moving data over. Again pretty simple but it is good to be aware of and it takes a little bit more time.

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