http://kap.benpeoples.com Notes and Musings on KAP Mon, 24 Mar 2008 13:34:29 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en If you don't know already, I'm a big fan of Edward Tufte, who is an informational designer. One of his big tenets is the concept of "informational density" -- basically the art of cramming as much data into a graph and keeping it readable. Graphics in USA Today ... http://kap.benpeoples.com/2008/03/23/weather-geeking-and-informational-density/ Two little graphics here: and This is the beginnings of the summer wind season in the Bay Area, which means you can generally select when you want to go KAPping, as long as it's in the afternoon, and you will probably have good wind. The first graph shows the wind & ... http://kap.benpeoples.com/2008/03/22/why-the-bay-area-is-so-popular-for-kap/ Yep -- it's summer. Or at least mostly. At least the winds think so. This is an overlay of the last three days observed winds at Alameda Point. I faded the older days to give some differentiation between the days, but you can see the trend. About ... http://kap.benpeoples.com/2008/03/21/savory-winds/ Just some musings on some things I worked out: Maxstream, now Digi, makes two versions of the Xbee radio modules.  Series 1 are 1mW or 60mW modules (depending on regular or Pro) with 100m or 1600m range.  Series 2 are 2mW or 50mW (120m/1600m).  However, their software is quite different. Series 1 ... http://kap.benpeoples.com/2008/03/21/xbee-series-1-vs-series-2-vs-digis-new-names-for-things/ This is the concept diagram for a tiny controller with 12 pins -- one side has two servo connections, one for pan one for servo. It'll take 2.7v to 5.5v (a slight variation in hardware would get me 1.8v to 5.5v). The basic idea is that you can ... http://kap.benpeoples.com/2008/03/21/tiny-controller/ The winds looked good this morning, so I headed out hoping for fair winds. The winds were a little light when I got out to the NAS, so I stopped by the Naval Air Museum and dropped off a print of the attached photo. I toured around ... http://kap.benpeoples.com/2008/01/20/unsavory-winds/ Having good weather data turns out to be a really important part of planning a KAP outing. You need steady winds, at the right rate. Here in the Bay Area, we have microclimates galore, so while it may be windy at the airport, it might not be ... http://kap.benpeoples.com/2008/01/19/weather-data/ Looking through last weekend's photos, I discovered something funny-- the shutter never worked while the camera was pointing to my left.  The pan/tilt response was slow, but there were no shots in that direction.  The culprit, I think, is antenna placement.  The antenna is located in that blue box there, ... http://kap.benpeoples.com/2008/01/12/antenna-issues/ I've finally finished the work to be able to convert my rig between an 800g film camera that's electronically triggered and a 150g digital camera that's servo triggered. Total weights on the rigs are 1250g for the film and 650g for the digital. http://kap.benpeoples.com/2008/01/12/convertible-rig/ Okay, probably not the *final* bits -- but I recieved the last couple parts I was waiting on for the KAP rig.  The radios I had been using (Xbee Series 2) were a little cumbersome, mainly because they required a PAN coordinator.  Super cool if you were doing a mesh ... http://kap.benpeoples.com/2008/01/05/final-bits-from-mouser/