Aerial Photography using a Pole

I was looking for a low cost way to create a Aerial Map of my backyard since the resolution on Google Maps was not high enough. I thought about using a balloon as outlined in this article --> HERE. Then I though maybe I could use one of my telescoping antenna supports to get a small camera in the air and use the same methods. I think I could have gotten Mapknitter to work for me but I stumbled on  Microsoft Image Composite Editor (ICE). I made the below image by putting my old iPhone 4 on the end of a 20 foot pole and turning it while capturing video. This software can do many other things and is worth a look. The best thing is that the application is free!

I am using a cheap wide angle lens on the iPhone (clip on type), this helps since it is not very high in the air and allows it to "see" more of the ground. I simply just twisted the pole while capturing video.

Once you bring the video into ICE, you can select the start and stop time of the video to do the processing on. The video segment I used was only about 8 seconds long. The application takes all the images in the video (e.g. >15 frames per second) and matches them up and stitches them together to form the larger composite image... magic!

VMWare 6 Home Lab II

I have now successfully cloned VMs and trouble shot my vMotion issue. I have vMotioned a running WinXP VM from one ESX host and back. The WinXP VM is running with minimal performance but does run. HA tests are next. I really would like a system with 32 GB and a Solid State Disk (SSD).

VMWare 6 Home Lab

I am working on a VMWare Home Lab running on a old Dell Studio XPS 8100. This is an i5 processor and I have increased the memory to 16 GB.

The approach is nested visualization.I have Win7 installed as the base OS, with VMWare Workstation.
Under Workstation I have created the following virtual machines (VM):

1.) Windows 2008 R2 Active Directory Services and DNS
2.) FreeNAS [Linux]
3.) VMware vCenter Server Virtual Appliance (vCSA) [Linux]
4.) ESXi Host 1
5.) ESXi Host 2

Now with in the nested lab environment I have built a couple of VM's on ESXi host 1:

1.) Damn Small Linux (DSL)
2.) Windows XP

I hope to be able to successfully perform vMotions between the ESXi hosts and then configure and test High Availability (HA) and Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS).

I took several days to build the lab and today I finally got the Windows XP VM setup with VMWare Tools.

I am up against the memory limits of my hardware but it is pretty amazing. We will see how far I can go with this configuration.

Folding Camper Build

I did a wood joint test using Gorilla glue. These joints will be glued an screwed. I will be using some light weight materials so the design is dependent on glue bonds on the wood skin. The test article is made with 1X4's jointed with a 2X2 and skinned on one side using 1/4" luan plywood.

After it is fully cured I will do some load test on it but it appears very  strong.

ManyThing

I stumbled over a cool app (manything) that allows you to turn you old smart phone (iOS)  into a security camera. Seems like a good service but costs if you want storage.

I captured the following based on motion in the frame.

If you couple this app with IFTTT you could use it to alert you of activity and set off an alert or send you an EMAIL or both, etc.

DIY Tacoma Bed Rack

Since I will be needing a bed rack system for my folding camper I came up with a low cost DIY method using mostly Home Depot parts.

The key piece to the system are the T-slot nuts that you can get from Amazon HERE.

The rest of the parts are the following:

• 1 inch long 3/8 inch bolts for the T-slot nuts
• 3/8 inch washers
• 3/8 inch lock washers
• 1 1/2 inch U-Bolt
• 3/4 inch conduit
• Superstrut 2-Hole 90 degree Angle Bracket - In Electrical section

That is two of the 90 degree bracket next to each other. So  each side needs two brackets, two t-slot nuts, two bolts and a U-bolt.

Here is another view with the bracket in position on the rail from below. Once everything is tightened up it becomes very strong, of course I provide no guarantee of safety, etc. use of this information is at your own risk. This system could also be used for mobile antennas :-) - 73

techBasic

I have been experimenting with techBasic for the iOS environment. It has it's ups and downs but is very comprehensive and well documented. It is the most expensive app I have ever purchased however the price is cheap considering what your getting. All the development is done on the device, e.g iPhone or iPad, I ended up getting a Bluetooth keyboard for my iPad, but it is cool coding on your iPhone directly.

Using the examples I was able to create an app that sets two dim levels over WiFi using UDP to a simple server running on my PC. There is a lot of potential and this barely scratches the surface of what techBasic can do.