Re: [OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM
2009/9/24 Mikel Maron mikel_ma...@yahoo.com: Note OSM can qualify for non-profit pricing on imagery, which can take the cost down to $12/km2. This is what we arranged for the Gaza imagery. How was the imagery hosted, and what software was used to generate vector data from this? ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM
On 23/09/2009, at 12.44, Robert Scott wrote: Very. Getting steady images from a balloon would be very difficult, even with a gimbal. The payload swings like a pendulum. You also wouldn't be able to control where the balloon went. You would have a very hard time fighting against wind with an RC blimp. How about hot-air ballons? They only fly under very low wind conditions, and although I've never been on one, I'm sure they don't swing all that much. If it were possible to produce a cheap and light-weight little box with a gyro-stabilized gimbal containing a camera and a GPS logger, we might be able to persuade balloon skippers to take it along. The altitude these things fly is 3-500 meters (I estimate) and that would give extremely high resolution aerial photos. -- Morten ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM
2009/9/26 Morten Kjeldgaard m...@bioxray.au.dk: If it were possible to produce a cheap and light-weight little box with a gyro-stabilized gimbal containing a camera and a GPS logger, we You don't need gyro stabilised if you have a fast shutter. People are using all sorts of things to do aerial photography, helium balloons, kites, rc blimps... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGGaaddpGA8feature=related There is even videos on how to make 2 axis + shutter camera holders: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXMcYdvuovY Although for this purpose vertically down would be the most beneficial I think. Kites would be too limiting. Anyone know anything about UAV blimps? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apcILH995AI ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM
On 26/09/2009, at 14.50, John Smith wrote: 2009/9/26 Morten Kjeldgaard m...@bioxray.au.dk: If it were possible to produce a cheap and light-weight little box with a gyro-stabilized gimbal containing a camera and a GPS logger, we You don't need gyro stabilised if you have a fast shutter. Well, my thought was to have the camera plane at all times perpendicular to the vertical axis, i.e. a weight mounted on the gimbal somehow. I know that a certain amount of correction can be performed on the images, but I think it is better to have as accurate photos as possible, that are known to be in a direction towards the center of the earth. Even so, there's a correction that needs to be performed to compensate for the distortion by the camera lens. People are using all sorts of things to do aerial photography, helium balloons, kites, rc blimps... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGGaaddpGA8feature=related Oh, that video is beautiful! :-) Cheers, Morten ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM
If you are in the UK it might be a good idea to contact these people for help/advice: http://ukhas.org.uk/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM
I wonder what one of these retail for: http://www.snotr.com/video/619 Apparently can autonomously hover at 20,000ft for 3 weeks with a 1 ton payload of surveliance equipment http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/09/24/0521225/250-Foot-Hybrid-Airship-To-Spy-Over-Afghanistan ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM
The OpenGeo Foundation in the Netherlands are also doing tests with quadcopters and fixed wing (3m) rc planes for aerial photography Best regards Rob, OpenGeo.nl 2009/9/24 John Smith deltafoxtrot...@gmail.com: I wonder what one of these retail for: http://www.snotr.com/video/619 Apparently can autonomously hover at 20,000ft for 3 weeks with a 1 ton payload of surveliance equipment http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/09/24/0521225/250-Foot-Hybrid-Airship-To-Spy-Over-Afghanistan ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM
Just noticed this on the front page of Wikipedia: Did you know... ...that in 2009 two MIT students made a vehicle to take pictures of the Earth from 93,000 feet (28,000 m) for US$148? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Icarus PaulY On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 10:50 AM, Joe Richards joefis...@yahoo.com wrote: Where did this idea go in the end? It seems the talk about it petered-out, or was some action agreed (along with who was going to undertake it)? Given the US have forgotten to keep the GPS system up to date, maybe we need a few satelites of our own to replace it... Or maybe we can use Galileo once its up instead. This was more about high-resolution aerial photography suitable for deriving traces. As for geopositioning satellites, I doubt the US military-industrial complex (or its adherents in places like Europe) will allow such a key technology to fall into real disrepair. Plus with future civilian receivers combining signals from Galileo and GPS, alongside radio signals, the future is actually looking brighter than ever... ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk -- Tel: +44(0) 7814 517 807 ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM
2009/9/23 paul youlten paul.youl...@gmail.com: Just noticed this on the front page of Wikipedia: Did you know... ...that in 2009 two MIT students made a vehicle to take pictures of the Earth from 93,000 feet (28,000 m) for US$148? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Icarus Yes but almost none of the imagery would be useful for vectorising however. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM
Yes but almost none of the imagery would be useful for vectorising however. How be difficult would it be to adapt their low-cost approach to give more useful images for mapping? Is it just a matter of attaching the camera to some sort of gimbal? ... because you'd only sending it up to 3,500m (rather than 30,000m) you wouldn't need to worry so much about low temperatures freezing the batteries. On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 10:00 AM, John Smith deltafoxtrot...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/9/23 paul youlten paul.youl...@gmail.com: Just noticed this on the front page of Wikipedia: Did you know... ...that in 2009 two MIT students made a vehicle to take pictures of the Earth from 93,000 feet (28,000 m) for US$148? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Icarus Yes but almost none of the imagery would be useful for vectorising however. -- Tel: +44(0) 7814 517 807 ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM
2009/9/23 paul youlten paul.youl...@gmail.com: ... because you'd only sending it up to 3,500m (rather than 30,000m) you wouldn't need to worry so much about low temperatures freezing the batteries. At that altitude you wouldn't have to worry about the balloon bursting at that altitude either. The bigger issue would be the weight of the tether. RC blimp might also be more practical since you could steer it etc. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM
RC blimp might also be more practical since you could steer it etc. Do modern RC controls have that sort of range? 3.5km seems a lot... an alternative would be to control it with GPS and some sort of electronic flight plan/autopilot. On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 11:16 AM, John Smith deltafoxtrot...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/9/23 paul youlten paul.youl...@gmail.com: ... because you'd only sending it up to 3,500m (rather than 30,000m) you wouldn't need to worry so much about low temperatures freezing the batteries. At that altitude you wouldn't have to worry about the balloon bursting at that altitude either. The bigger issue would be the weight of the tether. -- Tel: +44(0) 7814 517 807 ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM
2009/9/23 paul youlten paul.youl...@gmail.com: RC blimp might also be more practical since you could steer it etc. Do modern RC controls have that sort of range? 3.5km seems a lot... an alternative would be to control it with GPS and some sort of electronic flight plan/autopilot. Do you need to go above 1km? There is usually more restristrictions on UAVs than RC aircraft. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM
Hi, paul youlten wrote: Do modern RC controls have that sort of range? 3.5km seems a lot... an alternative would be to control it with GPS and some sort of electronic flight plan/autopilot. I always thought that aviation regulations require the pilot - whether on board or on the ground - to monitor the airspace around the aircraft and take evasive action where necessary. It would be hard to do that on the ground for an aircraft that far up. But maybe that depends on the country you're in. I think in the US it is pretty much everything goes up to 1200 feet AGL or so but after that you have to behave. Bye Frederik ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM
2009/9/23 Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org: I always thought that aviation regulations require the pilot - whether on board or on the ground - to monitor the airspace around the aircraft and take evasive action where necessary. It would be hard to do that on the ground for an aircraft that far up. But maybe that depends on the country you're in. I think in the US it is pretty much everything goes up to 1200 feet AGL or so but after that you have to behave. The other question to be asked is the time, effort and money put into this be less than archived sat imagery which is about $14 per sq km. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM
The other question to be asked is the time, effort and money put into this be less than archived sat imagery which is about $14 per sq km. Yeah...but it would be fun to try! ... and while $14/sq Km doesn't sound a lot it would still cost $5376 (£4900) just to get images of (for example) the Isle of Wight in the UK, $11000 (€7440) to get pictures of New York City and $8000 (€5414) for the island of Ibiza in Spain. On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 11:38 AM, John Smith deltafoxtrot...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/9/23 Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org: I always thought that aviation regulations require the pilot - whether on board or on the ground - to monitor the airspace around the aircraft and take evasive action where necessary. It would be hard to do that on the ground for an aircraft that far up. But maybe that depends on the country you're in. I think in the US it is pretty much everything goes up to 1200 feet AGL or so but after that you have to behave. The other question to be asked is the time, effort and money put into this be less than archived sat imagery which is about $14 per sq km. -- Tel: +44(0) 7814 517 807 ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM
2009/9/23 paul youlten paul.youl...@gmail.com: The other question to be asked is the time, effort and money put into this be less than archived sat imagery which is about $14 per sq km. Yeah...but it would be fun to try! ... and while $14/sq Km doesn't sound a lot it would still cost $5376 (£4900) just to get images of (for example) the Isle of Wight in the UK, $11000 (€7440) to get pictures of New York City and $8000 (€5414) for the island of Ibiza in Spain. You're implying that there wouldn't be transport and other logistical costs, it doesn't matter which way you go it isn't going to be free to go from place to place etc etc etc Instead of a toy/rc blimp, maybe it might be practical to make a full size one. You could have living quaters, internet connectivity and so on and so forth :) Maybe you could pick up a second hand one on the cheap :) ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM
On Wednesday 23 September 2009, paul youlten wrote: How be difficult would it be to adapt their low-cost approach to give more useful images for mapping? Very. Getting steady images from a balloon would be very difficult, even with a gimbal. The payload swings like a pendulum. You also wouldn't be able to control where the balloon went. You would have a very hard time fighting against wind with an RC blimp. Current efforts doing UAV aerial imagery revolve around fixed wing aircraft and to a lesser extent helicopters. They have limited flight times but are looking quite promising. robert. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM
On Wed, September 23, 2009 19:44, Robert Scott wrote: On Wednesday 23 September 2009, paul youlten wrote: How be difficult would it be to adapt their low-cost approach to give more useful images for mapping? Very. Getting steady images from a balloon would be very difficult, even with a gimbal. The payload swings like a pendulum. You also wouldn't be able to control where the balloon went. You would have a very hard time fighting against wind with an RC blimp. You could stabilise the camera with a gyroscope, spinning around a vertical axis. It would consume power to keep it spinning, and, by definition, it would add weight, but if the camera was pointing straight down when the gyroscope was started, then the gyroscope would tend to keep the axis vertical. And you wouldn't need to care where the balloon went, as long as it went somewhere you hadn't mapped yet. Or something. A ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM
Get a Canon IS lens on a SLR, the ones I have are quite good and mixed with a f-stop of 2.8 it means plenty of light so fast shutter speeds are easier. Only problem is weight, the latest kit weights a few kilos 1.7Kg IRRC just for the lens. Jack Stringer ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM
This looks interesting: http://www.slideshare.net/jpmund/aerial-photo-ballon-technique-mapasia2006 Does anyone know Jan-Peter Mund? ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM
Note OSM can qualify for non-profit pricing on imagery, which can take the cost down to $12/km2. This is what we arranged for the Gaza imagery. - Original Message From: paul youlten paul.youl...@gmail.com To: John Smith deltafoxtrot...@gmail.com Cc: Talk Openstreetmap talk@openstreetmap.org Sent: Wednesday, September 23, 2009 3:05:18 AM Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM The other question to be asked is the time, effort and money put into this be less than archived sat imagery which is about $14 per sq km. Yeah...but it would be fun to try! ... and while $14/sq Km doesn't sound a lot it would still cost $5376 (£4900) just to get images of (for example) the Isle of Wight in the UK, $11000 (€7440) to get pictures of New York City and $8000 (€5414) for the island of Ibiza in Spain. On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 11:38 AM, John Smith deltafoxtrot...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/9/23 Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org: I always thought that aviation regulations require the pilot - whether on board or on the ground - to monitor the airspace around the aircraft and take evasive action where necessary. It would be hard to do that on the ground for an aircraft that far up. But maybe that depends on the country you're in. I think in the US it is pretty much everything goes up to 1200 feet AGL or so but after that you have to behave. The other question to be asked is the time, effort and money put into this be less than archived sat imagery which is about $14 per sq km. -- Tel: +44(0) 7814 517 807 ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM
2009/9/23 paul youlten paul.youl...@gmail.com: This looks interesting: +1 http://www.slideshare.net/jpmund/aerial-photo-ballon-technique-mapasia2006 Does anyone know Jan-Peter Mund? don't know him, but he's not difficult to find (1st hit in g00gle ;-) http://www.staff.uni-mainz.de/mund/index.html cheers, Martin ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM
I've sent Dr Mund and Mr Tean Peang Seng an email inviting them to join the discussion. :-) On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 2:14 PM, Martin Koppenhoefer dieterdre...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/9/23 paul youlten paul.youl...@gmail.com: This looks interesting: +1 http://www.slideshare.net/jpmund/aerial-photo-ballon-technique-mapasia2006 Does anyone know Jan-Peter Mund? don't know him, but he's not difficult to find (1st hit in g00gle ;-) http://www.staff.uni-mainz.de/mund/index.html cheers, Martin -- Tel: +44(0) 7814 517 807 ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM
2009/9/23 paul youlten paul.youl...@gmail.com: I've sent Dr Mund and Mr Tean Peang Seng an email inviting them to join the discussion. sorry, the page I linkes seems outdated (2002 I guess from the context). There is more sites about him here: http://www.xing.com/profile/JanPeter_Mund and here: http://www.dlr.de/caf/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-2529/3787_read-17919/sortby-lastname/ cheers, Martin ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
[OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM (balloon-based aerial photography)
I briefly looked at the slide pack that was referenced in this thread ... this looks like a perfect high school science project (from a United States perspective). It would be awesome if we could introduce this as an annual school science project with the aim to photograph one area that has undergone construction (to completion) in the past year. I know a couple of people who engage in high school liaisons through corporate connections and this seems a perfect thing to propose through that line of communication. Cheers. -- openstreetmap login = ceyockey ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM
2009/5/20 Joe Richards joefis...@yahoo.com: Where did this idea go in the end? It seems the talk about it petered-out, or was some action agreed (along with who was going to undertake it)? Given the US have forgotten to keep the GPS system up to date, maybe we need a few satelites of our own to replace it... Or maybe we can use Galileo once its up instead. Peter. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM
Where did this idea go in the end? It seems the talk about it petered-out, or was some action agreed (along with who was going to undertake it)? Given the US have forgotten to keep the GPS system up to date, maybe we need a few satelites of our own to replace it... Or maybe we can use Galileo once its up instead. This was more about high-resolution aerial photography suitable for deriving traces. As for geopositioning satellites, I doubt the US military-industrial complex (or its adherents in places like Europe) will allow such a key technology to fall into real disrepair. Plus with future civilian receivers combining signals from Galileo and GPS, alongside radio signals, the future is actually looking brighter than ever... ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM
Where did this idea go in the end? It seems the talk about it petered-out, or was some action agreed (along with who was going to undertake it)? On 18 May 2009, at 13:36, MP singular...@gmail.com wrote: In addition to actively pursuing further experiments for the MOD and BNSC, the consortium is also seeking new applications to which the technology can be applied. i.e. it's as much a research project as a commercial operation... so maybe your idea of let's just ask them could work. Perhaps they can give us some photography from times when the satellite is idle (moving over areas where nobody wants currently photography of them) either for free or at some reduced cost Sound great, but in the mean time we can of course buy commercial photography including the right to derive mapping at a cost of about $17 per sq km So if we manage to photograph over 2300 square km of area of our choice in the week of rented satellite, then the satellite would end up being cheaper (and more up to date) than commercial photography. I guess that could be worth it. Martin ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM
On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 11:48 PM, Peter Miller peter.mil...@itoworld.com wrote: Sounds interesting. So possibly we can comply with the licensing regulations without any special actions by the user. Currently for the Gaza Strip we provide a URL 'in the clear where you get the URL on request and enter it into JOSM - no need to sign in to access it when you know the URL and no technical mechanism to stop it being mis-used - hence the person side of setting it up. As far as I remember, one of the clauses was that we were not to provide Gaza images in to the wild internet unless they were less than 10m resolution. This is why we ended up having a private WMS. -- -S ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM
2009/5/19 Simone Cortesi sim...@cortesi.com On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 11:48 PM, Peter Miller peter.mil...@itoworld.com wrote: Sounds interesting. So possibly we can comply with the licensing regulations without any special actions by the user. Currently for the Gaza Strip we provide a URL 'in the clear where you get the URL on request and enter it into JOSM - no need to sign in to access it when you know the URL and no technical mechanism to stop it being mis-used - hence the person side of setting it up. As far as I remember, one of the clauses was that we were not to provide Gaza images in to the wild internet unless they were less than 10m resolution. This is why we ended up having a private WMS. My understanding is that any one that wishes to contribute to OSM, they already have to register, as we do not allow for anonymous edits, I know that JOSM requires my account settings for upload. If that is the case, can we not just tie the OSM authentication in to the WMS layer, so that you are only able to view the data IF you have an OSM account. I know that if this is done it's not a case of just any thing, and certain pieces of infrastructure would be required (I'd be interested in helping with this), but if it would increase the ease of use, then may be it is some thing we should try and do? ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM
Douglas Furlong wrote: If that is the case, can we not just tie the OSM authentication in to the WMS layer, so that you are only able to view the data IF you have an OSM account. Exactly. One way to do it in Potlatch, for example, would be to require auth on the directory with the spherical Mercator tiles, perhaps against the user token generated by the Rails site. cheers Richard ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM
Matt Amos wrote: out of interest, is there a link to the £25k figure? i couldn't find any pricing information on the net anywhere... http://www.qinetiq.com/home/newsroom/news_releases_homepage/2006/4th_quarter/TopSat_toasts_its_first_birthday_with_Best_of_What_s_New_Grand_Award.html A feature of the programme is that for a cost of £25,000, customers can lease the satellite for a period of a week and control its schedule of imaging operations. Also: In addition to actively pursuing further experiments for the MOD and BNSC, the consortium is also seeking new applications to which the technology can be applied. i.e. it's as much a research project as a commercial operation... so maybe your idea of let's just ask them could work. cheers Richard -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Satellite-for-OSM-tp23587856p23592213.html Sent from the OpenStreetMap - General mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM
Matt Amos wrote: out of interest, is there a link to the £25k figure? i couldn't find any pricing information on the net anywhere... http://www.qinetiq.com/home/newsroom/news_releases_homepage/2006/4th_quarter/TopSat_toasts_its_first_birthday_with_Best_of_What_s_New_Grand_Award.html A feature of the programme is that for a cost of £25,000, customers can lease the satellite for a period of a week and control its schedule of imaging operations. Also: In addition to actively pursuing further experiments for the MOD and BNSC, the consortium is also seeking new applications to which the technology can be applied. i.e. it's as much a research project as a commercial operation... so maybe your idea of let's just ask them could work. cheers Richard -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Satellite-for-OSM-tp23587856p23592214.html Sent from the OpenStreetMap - General mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM
On 18 May 2009, at 01:38, Matt Amos wrote: On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 11:32 PM, MP singular...@gmail.com wrote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TopSat http://www.qinetiq.com/home/defence/defence_solutions/space/topsat.html Apparently you can rent it for £25k a week... easily within the ambition of donate.openstreetmap.org. How large part of earth could be imaged in that timeframe? Topsat have 2.5m resolution, which is quite fine for most areas, though less than aerial imagery ... 2.5m sounds about the same as Y!, so its even enough for rudimentary building mapping. but thats the black-and-white figure, the colour resolution is about 5m. :-) out of interest, is there a link to the £25k figure? i couldn't find any pricing information on the net anywhere... Sound great, but in the mean time we can of course buy commercial photography including the right to derive mapping at a cost of about $17 per sq km which is affordable for compact European cities but not for large rain-forests! The Gaza strip cost £4,500 and photography for the Birmingham conurbation would be about £5,000. A small UK town would be £5000. The West Midlands are looking for sponsors at present. http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Aerial_photography_funding_appeals Regards, Peter i guess hiring it for any fixed period is a bit hit-and-miss, since satellite imagery will be affected much more by cloud conditions. MP's point about what you do with the vast quantities of data that you get is well-observed, of course. But we like a challenge. One thing is having the data on ground - entire world (510,072,000 km²) from Topsat in 2.5m resolution will have ~ 245Tb of uncompressed data (you'll get to about 1/3 of that if you discard imagery with just sea), which is lot, but perhaps still manageable. at 5m in colour, thats about 20.4 Tb for the land portions of the world. compressing in JPEG, which compresses about 2:1 based on their sample images, thats 10.2 Tb - or 1,400 gmail accounts ;-) or it would cost $20,110 to put it into S3 and host for a year (without downloading) or about £1,400 to stick it on some 1Tb SATA drives in a RAID1+0... (interesting co-incidence which implies that each gmail account at capacity costs google about £1 in storage...) But you have to either store some non-trivial part of it on the satellite (that is not as easy as on earth where you can buy some server with RAID and plug it into wall) while the satellite does not have direct visibility of the earth contyrol center where it can relay stored images (and then you have some means to transmit large amount of the data while the satellite flies over the earth control center) or have multiple ground stations or bunch of another satellites that relay the continuously transmitted data. i have to assume that qinetiq have some way of solving this. also, would it be worth it as a PR stunt for qinetiq to just use up whatever spare capacity they have when maneuvering or between clients and give us whatever gets photographed...? anyone know anyone at qinetiq? cheers, matt ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM
I've emailed the BNSC to obtain the correct contact details for the TopSat team. Will see what comes back. Cheers Andy -Original Message- From: talk-boun...@openstreetmap.org [mailto:talk- boun...@openstreetmap.org] On Behalf Of Peter Miller Sent: 18 May 2009 9:29 AM To: Matt Amos Cc: Talk Openstreetmap Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM On 18 May 2009, at 01:38, Matt Amos wrote: On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 11:32 PM, MP singular...@gmail.com wrote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TopSat http://www.qinetiq.com/home/defence/defence_solutions/space/topsat.html Apparently you can rent it for £25k a week... easily within the ambition of donate.openstreetmap.org. How large part of earth could be imaged in that timeframe? Topsat have 2.5m resolution, which is quite fine for most areas, though less than aerial imagery ... 2.5m sounds about the same as Y!, so its even enough for rudimentary building mapping. but thats the black-and-white figure, the colour resolution is about 5m. :-) out of interest, is there a link to the £25k figure? i couldn't find any pricing information on the net anywhere... Sound great, but in the mean time we can of course buy commercial photography including the right to derive mapping at a cost of about $17 per sq km which is affordable for compact European cities but not for large rain-forests! The Gaza strip cost £4,500 and photography for the Birmingham conurbation would be about £5,000. A small UK town would be £5000. The West Midlands are looking for sponsors at present. http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Aerial_photography_funding_appeals Regards, Peter i guess hiring it for any fixed period is a bit hit-and-miss, since satellite imagery will be affected much more by cloud conditions. MP's point about what you do with the vast quantities of data that you get is well-observed, of course. But we like a challenge. One thing is having the data on ground - entire world (510,072,000 km²) from Topsat in 2.5m resolution will have ~ 245Tb of uncompressed data (you'll get to about 1/3 of that if you discard imagery with just sea), which is lot, but perhaps still manageable. at 5m in colour, thats about 20.4 Tb for the land portions of the world. compressing in JPEG, which compresses about 2:1 based on their sample images, thats 10.2 Tb - or 1,400 gmail accounts ;-) or it would cost $20,110 to put it into S3 and host for a year (without downloading) or about £1,400 to stick it on some 1Tb SATA drives in a RAID1+0... (interesting co-incidence which implies that each gmail account at capacity costs google about £1 in storage...) But you have to either store some non-trivial part of it on the satellite (that is not as easy as on earth where you can buy some server with RAID and plug it into wall) while the satellite does not have direct visibility of the earth contyrol center where it can relay stored images (and then you have some means to transmit large amount of the data while the satellite flies over the earth control center) or have multiple ground stations or bunch of another satellites that relay the continuously transmitted data. i have to assume that qinetiq have some way of solving this. also, would it be worth it as a PR stunt for qinetiq to just use up whatever spare capacity they have when maneuvering or between clients and give us whatever gets photographed...? anyone know anyone at qinetiq? cheers, matt ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM
On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 9:29 AM, Peter Miller peter.mil...@itoworld.com wrote: On 18 May 2009, at 01:38, Matt Amos wrote: On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 11:32 PM, MP singular...@gmail.com wrote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TopSat http://www.qinetiq.com/home/defence/defence_solutions/space/topsat.html Apparently you can rent it for £25k a week... easily within the ambition of donate.openstreetmap.org. How large part of earth could be imaged in that timeframe? Topsat have 2.5m resolution, which is quite fine for most areas, though less than aerial imagery ... 2.5m sounds about the same as Y!, so its even enough for rudimentary building mapping. but thats the black-and-white figure, the colour resolution is about 5m. :-) out of interest, is there a link to the £25k figure? i couldn't find any pricing information on the net anywhere... Sound great, but in the mean time we can of course buy commercial photography including the right to derive mapping at a cost of about $17 per sq km which is affordable for compact European cities but not for large rain-forests! The Gaza strip cost £4,500 didn't you have to restrict that to a small number of signed-up mappers though? i would have thought that, hiring topsat rather than licensing the imagery, we wouldn't have to restrict imagery use to a small group of people. and photography for the Birmingham conurbation would be about £5,000. A small UK town would be £5000. The West Midlands are looking for sponsors at present. http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Aerial_photography_funding_appeals but, again, sounds from that wiki page like it would be restricted to a few users, rather than truly open. cheers, matt ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM
Hi, Matt Amos wrote: didn't you have to restrict that to a small number of signed-up mappers though? i would have thought that, hiring topsat rather than licensing the imagery, we wouldn't have to restrict imagery use to a small group of people. With the Bavarian imagery that was loaned to us, we saw that the project attracted quite a few casual mappers who spent half a day just to be part of it but who would most likely not have signed up to participate in a limited access project. So if it *can* be avoided that's certainly useful. Sometimes when the licensor requests that access be limited, one can talk them into accepting some heavy watermarking on the images instead, which makes them un-interesting for any application but tracing. They are more likely to allow such images out in the open. Bye Frederik ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM
On 18 May 2009, at 11:48, Frederik Ramm wrote: Hi, Matt Amos wrote: didn't you have to restrict that to a small number of signed-up mappers though? i would have thought that, hiring topsat rather than licensing the imagery, we wouldn't have to restrict imagery use to a small group of people. With the Bavarian imagery that was loaned to us, we saw that the project attracted quite a few casual mappers who spent half a day just to be part of it but who would most likely not have signed up to participate in a limited access project. So if it *can* be avoided that's certainly useful. Sometimes when the licensor requests that access be limited, one can talk them into accepting some heavy watermarking on the images instead, which makes them un-interesting for any application but tracing. They are more likely to allow such images out in the open. From memory, all that the license requires is that it isn't made generally available as a free on-line internet resource and that it is used for the agreed purpose by known people. We would need to take advice on it, but I see no reason why mappers can't sign-up to use the photography on-line and agree to use it only for this purpose. In other words it will take a little thought but is certainly much easier and faster than doing our own photography and would allow people to get instant access to the photography. Regards, Peter Bye Frederik ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM
In addition to actively pursuing further experiments for the MOD and BNSC, the consortium is also seeking new applications to which the technology can be applied. i.e. it's as much a research project as a commercial operation... so maybe your idea of let's just ask them could work. Perhaps they can give us some photography from times when the satellite is idle (moving over areas where nobody wants currently photography of them) either for free or at some reduced cost Sound great, but in the mean time we can of course buy commercial photography including the right to derive mapping at a cost of about $17 per sq km So if we manage to photograph over 2300 square km of area of our choice in the week of rented satellite, then the satellite would end up being cheaper (and more up to date) than commercial photography. I guess that could be worth it. Martin ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM
Peter Miller wrote: We would need to take advice on it, but I see no reason why mappers can't sign-up to use the photography on-line Er, we do that already. You can't edit OSM without registering. cheers Richard -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Satellite-for-OSM-tp23587856p23598839.html Sent from the OpenStreetMap - General mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM
On 18 May 2009, at 16:40, Richard Fairhurst wrote: Peter Miller wrote: We would need to take advice on it, but I see no reason why mappers can't sign-up to use the photography on-line Er, we do that already. You can't edit OSM without registering. Sounds interesting. So possibly we can comply with the licensing regulations without any special actions by the user. Currently for the Gaza Strip we provide a URL 'in the clear where you get the URL on request and enter it into JOSM - no need to sign in to access it when you know the URL and no technical mechanism to stop it being mis-used - hence the person side of setting it up. It would of course be good to provide the user with simple access to the photography through Potlatch only available to registered users (which as you say is all users)- would that be possible? Regards, Peter cheers Richard -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Satellite-for-OSM-tp23587856p23598839.html Sent from the OpenStreetMap - General mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
[OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM
To lunch a small Satellite is not very expensive. Are there plans for an OSM satellite? Here some informations about small satellites http://www.lr.tudelft.nl/live/pagina.jsp?id=93f0b74b-d401-4d3b-bc93-b46aff8d5ab5lang=en Bernhard ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM
Hi, Bernhard zwischenbrugger wrote: To lunch a small Satellite is not very expensive. Not if you plan to let it make photos that are of better resolution than Landsat though! Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09 E008°23'33 ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM
To lunch a small Satellite is not very expensive. Are there plans for an OSM satellite? But it is very expensive to build one - if you want satellite to provide some satellite imagery, you'll have to put up some sensors, power source, computing power, some means to transport data back to earth (computer to store the data and send them once satellite passes over ground control center, or multiple satellites, once to make imagery, anothers to help relaying the data) and of course some ground control centre Plus, you won't get probably much higher resolution than landsat. Hi-res aerial imagery is usually done from airplanes from about 1 km height. Imagery satellites like landsat orbit around 700 km. Actually launching the satellite to orbit is only fraction of whole costs. A small fraction. Martin ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM
It depends which restaurant to take it to. ;-) Bernhard zwischenbrugger wrote: To lunch a small Satellite is not very expensive. Are there plans for an OSM satellite? Here some informations about small satellites http://www.lr.tudelft.nl/live/pagina.jsp?id=93f0b74b-d401-4d3b-bc93-b46aff8d5ab5lang=en Bernhard ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM
Frederik Ramm wrote: Not if you plan to let it make photos that are of better resolution than Landsat though! Oh, I don't know: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TopSat http://www.qinetiq.com/home/defence/defence_solutions/space/topsat.html Apparently you can rent it for £25k a week... easily within the ambition of donate.openstreetmap.org. (And they give the images free to humanitarian agencies, see http://www.qinetiq.com/home/newsroom/news_releases_homepage/2007/4th_quarter/topsat_satellite_imagery.html - Mikel, do you reckon we could get in on that?) MP's point about what you do with the vast quantities of data that you get is well-observed, of course. But we like a challenge. cheers Richard -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Satellite-for-OSM-tp23587856p23588185.html Sent from the OpenStreetMap - General mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TopSat http://www.qinetiq.com/home/defence/defence_solutions/space/topsat.html Apparently you can rent it for £25k a week... easily within the ambition of donate.openstreetmap.org. How large part of earth could be imaged in that timeframe? Topsat have 2.5m resolution, which is quite fine for most areas, though less than aerial imagery ... MP's point about what you do with the vast quantities of data that you get is well-observed, of course. But we like a challenge. One thing is having the data on ground - entire world (510,072,000 km²) from Topsat in 2.5m resolution will have ~ 245Tb of uncompressed data (you'll get to about 1/3 of that if you discard imagery with just sea), which is lot, but perhaps still manageable. But you have to either store some non-trivial part of it on the satellite (that is not as easy as on earth where you can buy some server with RAID and plug it into wall) while the satellite does not have direct visibility of the earth contyrol center where it can relay stored images (and then you have some means to transmit large amount of the data while the satellite flies over the earth control center) or have multiple ground stations or bunch of another satellites that relay the continuously transmitted data. Martin ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM
On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 11:32 PM, MP singular...@gmail.com wrote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TopSat http://www.qinetiq.com/home/defence/defence_solutions/space/topsat.html Apparently you can rent it for £25k a week... easily within the ambition of donate.openstreetmap.org. How large part of earth could be imaged in that timeframe? Topsat have 2.5m resolution, which is quite fine for most areas, though less than aerial imagery ... 2.5m sounds about the same as Y!, so its even enough for rudimentary building mapping. but thats the black-and-white figure, the colour resolution is about 5m. :-) out of interest, is there a link to the £25k figure? i couldn't find any pricing information on the net anywhere... i guess hiring it for any fixed period is a bit hit-and-miss, since satellite imagery will be affected much more by cloud conditions. MP's point about what you do with the vast quantities of data that you get is well-observed, of course. But we like a challenge. One thing is having the data on ground - entire world (510,072,000 km²) from Topsat in 2.5m resolution will have ~ 245Tb of uncompressed data (you'll get to about 1/3 of that if you discard imagery with just sea), which is lot, but perhaps still manageable. at 5m in colour, thats about 20.4 Tb for the land portions of the world. compressing in JPEG, which compresses about 2:1 based on their sample images, thats 10.2 Tb - or 1,400 gmail accounts ;-) or it would cost $20,110 to put it into S3 and host for a year (without downloading) or about £1,400 to stick it on some 1Tb SATA drives in a RAID1+0... (interesting co-incidence which implies that each gmail account at capacity costs google about £1 in storage...) But you have to either store some non-trivial part of it on the satellite (that is not as easy as on earth where you can buy some server with RAID and plug it into wall) while the satellite does not have direct visibility of the earth contyrol center where it can relay stored images (and then you have some means to transmit large amount of the data while the satellite flies over the earth control center) or have multiple ground stations or bunch of another satellites that relay the continuously transmitted data. i have to assume that qinetiq have some way of solving this. also, would it be worth it as a PR stunt for qinetiq to just use up whatever spare capacity they have when maneuvering or between clients and give us whatever gets photographed...? anyone know anyone at qinetiq? cheers, matt ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM
2.5m sounds about the same as Y!, so its even enough for rudimentary building mapping. but thats the black-and-white figure, the colour resolution is about 5m. :-) You can merge them and get something with almost same quality as 2.5m color resolution. also, would it be worth it as a PR stunt for qinetiq to just use up whatever spare capacity they have when maneuvering or between clients and give us whatever gets photographed...? anyone know anyone at qinetiq? Maneuvering? The satellite does not have fuel for maneuvers - it have some fuel to make small corrections on the orbit and shift perhaps few meters to avoid collision with debris and other satellites, but not fuel to make any significant changes to the orbit. Landsat have 16 days period in which the orbital pattern repeats: http://landsathandbook.gsfc.nasa.gov/handbook/handbook_htmls/chapter5/chapter5.html I suspect TopSat will have similar orbital characteristics, so you'll have to choose the time when the satellite is flying over area of interest. Also, their website says The satellite is designed to return its data directly to a mobile ground station immediately after collecting. I suspect the satellite have little or no means of storing the photos, so it will just broadcast it down to mobile station. So I suspect you'll need to put up some mobile station somewhere near the photographed area. Martin ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM
On Monday 18 May 2009 02:38:10 Matt Amos wrote: But you have to either store some non-trivial part of it on the satellite (that is not as easy as on earth where you can buy some server with RAID and plug it into wall) while the satellite does not have direct visibility of the earth contyrol center where it can relay stored images (and then you have some means to transmit large amount of the data while the satellite flies over the earth control center) or have multiple ground stations or bunch of another satellites that relay the continuously transmitted data. i have to assume that qinetiq have some way of solving this. That satellite is specifically designed to work with mobile ground stations that are somewhere near the area that gets photographed. It's designed to give military commanders in the field answers to questions like: What does it look like right now on the other side of that mountain? Without that information having to go through some intel department back home. The current satellite is just a proof of concept. They'll need 4 of them to get to once a day coverage for the whole world So they didn't really solve the problem, but avoided it. -- m.v.g., Cartinus ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM
On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 2:19 AM, Cartinus carti...@xs4all.nl wrote: On Monday 18 May 2009 02:38:10 Matt Amos wrote: But you have to either store some non-trivial part of it on the satellite (that is not as easy as on earth where you can buy some server with RAID and plug it into wall) while the satellite does not have direct visibility of the earth contyrol center where it can relay stored images (and then you have some means to transmit large amount of the data while the satellite flies over the earth control center) or have multiple ground stations or bunch of another satellites that relay the continuously transmitted data. i have to assume that qinetiq have some way of solving this. That satellite is specifically designed to work with mobile ground stations that are somewhere near the area that gets photographed. qinetiq have a ground station in the UK, so i presume they have contact with the satellite while its over europe and parts of africa. their docs seem to suggest that the mobile ground station is optional, so they might either have a network of stations or some storage on the satellite. they also say the download format is a CCSDS standard, so it may be possible to get some help from universities around the world who may have the appropriate equipment to receive the signal... maybe. The current satellite is just a proof of concept. They'll need 4 of them to get to once a day coverage for the whole world So they didn't really solve the problem, but avoided it. sounds like pragmatic engineering ;-) cheers, matt ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
