Does anyone know of a reasonably priced camera that will accept RTK input from an RTK GPS unit? It needs to be good digital camera, not a camera like the one on the TSC2.
Have you thought about something like this? I am assuming this is for one of your UA's?
There are cameras with GPS, I have two
Nikon AW-110
Fujifilm FinePix XP30
Both take great digital pics and tag with a GPS location
The Nikon has a compass that will show the direction of view from the GPS location
:stakeout:
The Nikon Works very well. I use it as a personal camera when i don't want to risk my phone or SLR.
it is VERY "Life proof"
http://www.amazon.com/Nikon-COOLPIX-Waterproof-Digital-Camera/dp/B005IGVY92
I use Canon cameras (SX260, S100) using CHDK (Canon Hack Development Kit) to utilize an intervelometer script. I have never bothered trying to have my flight controller trigger the camera. I seem to be getting by with out the interface. I usually fly low enough that I need to trigger the camera at the near minimum time interval the cameras are capable of which is approximately 2 seconds. Also, one less thing to go wrong in the field. I also don't bother with trying sync the aircraft position as derived from the on-board GNSS to each photo event. I utilize the camera's internal GPS to geotag the images. The software (Pix4D) does a fine job of calibrating and optimizing the camera locations, pitch, roll and yaw despite the more refined position available from the flight controller or RTK. It may work a bit harder to get to that point, but it seems to work for me. Maybe someone with one of those fancy SenseFly's or Trimble units can chime in as to the benefit of having a RTK derived initial position (besides not having to lay-out ground control) over the much less accurate on-board GPS derived position?
A Harris-
Are you using your Nikon for close-range photogrammetry? If so, does the heading info within the image metadata get utilized by your processing software?
I'm not aware of any RTK capable cameras, but one solution would be to purchase a light-weight receiver and align the camera nodal and receiver reference points, so that only a constant vertical difference exists. Piksi might be one such solution:
I do not believe that the response time of the Nikon AW-110 to display the details would be fast enough while in flight.
It is more of a stationary camera and the battery time during full GPS and compass modes is very short.
I will use three batteries on a normal day to document everything.
