DIY Black Box (Tagging photos with GPS coordinates)
by Phillip Torrone 
posted Sep 17th 2004 at 2:10PM
In our weekly How-To this week we showed you how we hacked an old digital camera to take a photo automatically as fast as it can until the memory card fills up or the battery dies using a $1.49 LM555 Timer Chip from RadioShack. As mentioned in our intro, once you do this to a digital camera there are lots of other things you can do, and here's one in progress, the BlackBoxing of our car by tagging photos with GPS coordinates.
We use this term loosely, since theres not really a term that better describes it. The experimental project were
working on tracks where a car has been (via GPS) as well as taking many photos for each mile Based on our first round
of testing we get about 800 photos per hour, or 10 photos per mile (city). Each photo is time stamped and the GPS unit
records time as well as location, so its fairly easy to match up the data and images to look back at the route, speed,
locations and more. Theres a Sony camera
attachment that combines GPS and still photos now, so we might use one of those at some point.
Perhaps in the future when digital camera and storage are so cheap and so pervasive, well have cameras recording all
of our driving and occasionally use the data, logs, images and video for insurance or other purpose
as described
here. This of course opens a whole other discussion about privacy, but for now, we are doing all this to ourself so
shame us, whatever.
The Camera
The camera we used is from our earlier How-To. Its
an old Olympus Digital camera that uses SmartMedia cards, its been sitting in our basement for 2 years waiting to go
for car rides and fly on kites. We hacked it to automatically take photos until the card is full or the batteries
die.
The Mount + GPS
To mount, actually hang, the camera in the car we used a coat hanger and some electrical tape (this is a prototype for now). We placed the Garmin GPS Forerunner on the hanger as well.
The Drive
We drove around 3 miles in about 12 minutes taking over 125 photos from our starting point to RadioShack (our final
destination in the University of Washington District).
The Map
Heres the route we took from a starting point in Freemont, WA and ending at the RadioShack in the U-District.
If you want to see how we made the maps we have that
How-to as well, basically we imported the data from the GPS and ran it through an application that grabs the photos
from a free satellite photo server.
The Photos
The camera took over 120 photos on our trip logging the time, while the GPS logged the time and location. It would
take way too long to post all 120 photos (and most are the backs of cars) so, here are some from our trip with
location. If youre hardcore and want to check out all 120 photos and the XML file drop us a line.
Whats next
Were still finishing up the kite photography How-To which will be up shortly, if youre in the Seattle area and its nice out, drop us a line if you want to check out our experiment this weekend.
...as well as adding a small digital camera to our organic dog, stay tuned.
Phillip Torrone can be reached via his personal site: http://www.flashenabled.com
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
TheZodiac @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM
I loved the how-to on the digital camera timer. Though, has anyone tried this with a dakoaone time digital (cough cough) or the CVS one with the LCD screen?
For $11 might be easier for some to try it out. I already did the hack trick for the dakota, works nice. This would be a nice addition.
Jerrod Hofferth @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM
...why haven't camera manufacturers added this feature to a camera built-in? Now that would be sweet.
Gorilla @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM
where do I get a cheap digicam like that?
Dave M. @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM
I was just thinking about that today. I was wondering when digital camera manufacturers would add a GPS to their cameras so that we could have a location tag for the pictures we take.
I can see it being very helpful for a vacation. I took a ton of pictures in London on my honeymoon, but have absolutly no idea what any of them are now. Well, some of them are obvious, but most, I just don't remember. Having a location would have really helped pin down what the picture is of.
Of course, on the flip side, terrorists could use the tech to pinpoint a target. :shrug: Guess that's the world we live in now...
Chris Gunton @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM
if i remember correctly, there is a Sony(?) digicam that does that? or maybe it was an SLR i saw. cant remember.
Dan @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM
Kodak DC290/DC260 digcams + Garmin in 2000:
http://www.kodak.com/US/en/digital/cameras/dc290/dc290GPSKit.jhtml
http://www.gadgetcentral.com/kodakdc265gps.htm
http://faqs.kodak.com/Digital_Cameras_English/FAQ_35_6406.shtm
Taroc @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM
Are you also recording the direction the camera was pointing for each photo? Can you get that info from GPS, or would that require a digital compass?
Falke @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM
To overlay GPS track logs (Forerunner, GPX, Mapsource, etc) onto a satellite photo / map try this website: http://maps.innersource.com
David Faulkner @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM
I do believe that some of the first generation Nikon Digital SLRs had a serial port build it to interface with GPS and record the data into the picture file. I always thought that was the coolest idea ever. However since I will probably never be able to afford a Nikon DSLR setup I had a second thought.
Most of todays digital cameras can be controled via USB or FireWire and Remote Control software. I know that all of the Canons are this way. USB GPS for laptops are very cheap now. Maybe there is a way to write or hack some software so that a laptop controling the camera can insert the GPS data into the file when it writes it to the HDD?
It would mean that you wouldn't necessary have to physically hack the camera (as much fun as I am sure that is) plus you wouldn't have to worry about running out of storage space using the laptop HDD as storage.
Scott Thompson @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM
I needed this a week ago! I just got back from a hiking trip to find (yes, find) a piece of property a late family member bought in Western NM two decades ago. While out, I documented much of my trip with my Canon S50 and added voice notes of the UTM coordinates to many of the shots along the way. (UTM because I was using USGS topo maps) If similar functionality couldbe provided via EXIF data, etc, and could automated, it would a major help for this sort of thing. Great job!
Big Dave Diode @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM
The Nikon D2X has an optional GPS attachment:
http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=7-6459-7204
I think it accepts standard NMEA through the serial line. It also updates its internal time and timezone using the GPS data. A little pricey though.
Tarek @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM
Just take a picture of the GPS's clock with the camera. Should be pretty accurate, especially if you take the pic in as low res as possible to expedite the save to flash (and thus the timestamp)...
(of course, we're prolly talking tenths of a second there, so that might be ott...)
Jason @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM
Looks like what I've been doing in my photo album by compairing exif timestamps to gps tracklogs with a small shell script I wrote. I have a sample here http://www.charcalla.com/sample/sample.html
Keep up the good work!
Bob Hackenberg @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM
One variation on black box for mixing the gps and the digital image is to have both the camera and the GPS connected to a laptop computer. It's easy for a laptop to record the GPS stream of data. I would like to see a script on the laptop to trigger the camera on a software-selected interval and save the photo to hard disk.
In post-processing, it would be simple to match up the photos that were taken with the gps coordinates based on the timestamp of the photo.
The hard part is to get the laptop to trigger the camera and to grab the image. Could you come with a solution for that? I use an Olympus 2020Z.
-- Bob
Jake @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM
This website does a good job at letting you share your GPS-pictures with the word, if you want. It shows them overlayed on a map.
http://www.geosnapper.com
Matt @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM
There have been a number of related projects out there for a while now. Microsoft research has a kinda neat thing going with their WWMX project here: http://wwmx.org.
But if you've not seen it, check out Ken Adleman's California Coastline site. He shot all 1100 miles of the CA coast from his helicopter and put it online. http://www.californiacoastline.org
kuros @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM
that is the silliest gobbly goop junk on a car i have ever seen
cmlp @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM
This is a handy util for this stuff:
OziPhotoTool combines the technology of a GPS receiver and a digital camera to automatically keep a record of where digital photos were taken. It is designed to be used in conjunction with OziExplorer. Most digital cameras have EXIF metadata stored as part of the photo. This includes is the date and time the photo was taken. Many GPS units have tracklogs. The GPS keeps a record of points that the unit has traveled over, including the time at each point. OziExplorer can read tracks from many different GPS units.
Get it here - http://oziphototool.alistairdickie.com/
David Tan @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM
Has anyone worked out a way to get photos of the CVS cameras without taking thme back to the shop yet?
Frank @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM
I made a solution 2 years ago by combining a webcam and a GPS
Jens Schwoon @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM
take the easier way:
www.grazer.de