Project has funded successfully (woohoo!), thanks for all the support, retweets, re-facebooks, etc.

If you are a backer, make sure that the funding mailing list is not going into your spam folder-- I just posted on it this morning.

If you are not a backer, mosey on over to http://pittsburgh.benpeoples.com/about/ and donate, OR drop a line to ann-sub@benpeoples.com and you'll be subscribed to the general announcement mailing list. You won't get the exclusive content, but you will get updates.

Thanks!
Ben

Hey,

I did not receive the grant from the Sprout Fund. However, that was primarily funding Phase 2 of the project, so not the end of the world. I have just launched a Kickstarter Project for Phase 2 here: http://bit.ly/PghIndHist

And the first person to pledge $5 or more to the new project, gets a special super-secret surprise.

So far the project is doing quite well-- we've raised $349 through this Kickstarte projectr, and another $300 in an in-kind donation.

Thanks again!

Ben

Find out today about the Sproutfund grant -- that will determine if I need to do another round of funding on Kickstarter or not =)

Still looking for corporate sponsors-- if you know anyone who might be interested, they're still on the table.

In the meantime, I photographed the airside controller for the helicopter, the photo is attached here. It's coming together nicely!

So this current triple-parachute recovery system seems to be working quite well-- this past weekend I tested it again, but deploying from a closed box. That is, I have a box around the size of a paperback book with the three parachutes crammed in there, some rubber bands, and a release pin. When the pin is pulled, the 'chutes are ejected from the box.

This one's a shorter video, with just the parachute drop. I managed to not attach the box to the parachutes or the weight, so it flutters free chasing the parachutes down. I also managed to get the camera into a much better position, but the wind was such that the parachutes blew right under the bridge immediately after falling. If you have speakers or headphones, you'll hear that satisfying "whump" of parachutes opening.

http://vimeo.com/6784378

=)
Ben

I'm starting to work out how many images I need to cover some of the areas I'll be mapping, and what resolution they'll be. The site of the Duquense Works is about 1.6 miles long, and 0.2 miles at its widest. I'm planning on doing imagery at 0.3 inches per pixel.

Yeah: 0.3 INCHES. A stray soda can is going to be around 15 pixels tall. This should reveal all kinds of interesting things about the sites. If in a single image, the Duquesne site would be 12 gigapixels -- about 330,000 tall. Printed at 300dpi, that'd be around 92 feet long. And likely this, to some level or another, for all 40 sites-- assuming there's something there to see.

Ron Baraff, from Rivers of Steel, was telling me that someone recently discovered some older foundations at the Duquesne site-- these would have been lost if someone weren't out there looking for them. A good part of my project is going to be providing researchers with gigabytes of data to start to pore through looking for the lost history of these sites.

Also, if you're wondering how to present a gigapixel image, zoomify is a good source. This image is a 75 megapixel image from hundreds of kite images of the shoreline of a river in Mendocino County, CA.

On a more technical note-- the kickstarter project is generally funding the equipment to go shoot this project. The $300 target was the minimum to get off the ground-- literally-- what's above the $300 mark? A few things:
Batteries! Both UAVs I'm building need a lot of power. The long-range one draws about 15-20A during flight, the helicopter draws about 40A. Being able to pack spare batteries on site visits mean more flying time, which means more images!
GPS Well, more GPS. I currently have one fairly inexpensive GPS module, but having two more accurate ones would be a huge boon for the project. In short-- GPS has a tendency to "drift" as the satellites come in and out of view. If there's a separate logger on the ground that you know isn't moving (usually tripod mounted) -- you can subtract the recorded "movement" of the ground based one from the air-based one and get a more accurate plot of location. This becomes key when dealing with mapping.

Thanks for all your support so far! 52 days to go!

Thanks to everybody for getting the project to 100% with 57 days to go!

The focus now is on larger corporate sponsors in the $200-$400 range. I have a particular focus on local Pittsburgh companies that might be interested in some exposure for a cool little project. Alternate arrangements can be made-- just have them drop me a note.

=)
Ben

(Also -- tested part of the system today -- posting the video to Vimeo right now (it should be up within an hour). It will only be accessible to Backers, so if you haven't contributed - now is the time)

Thanks to all the backers -- 90% is awesome.

One short note is that I've set up a mailing list for general announcements, you can subscribe by e-mailing anno...@benpeoples.com (click on the ... for the rest of it)

All of the backers who pledged $5 or more will be on their own list for the exclusive behind the scenes content!

Also, will be adding a couple more rewards levels later today.

Thanks again!
Ben

Thanks to a very generous relative, we're now very close to the $300 goal!

In advance of the G20 next week in Pittsburgh, there's a nice editorial in PopCity -- The Business Case for the Arts (Thanks to @MattressFactory for the link)