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Hardware

Storing Massive Images Direct From Digital Camera? 20

Posted by Cliff from the how-would-you-do-it? dept.
benzilla asks: "I'm using a digital camera to take aerial photos from a helicopter. Flash cards for this camera are too expensive and keep breaking apparently. An idea would be to take a raid up in the 'copter and write the images directly to this (due to the cost of the flights the requirement is to be able to store as many images (4-8mb each) as possible on the raid each flight, as well as using redundancy to ensure that the picture is saved. This raid would then be read via the office network (Windows unfortunately). I don't really want to send a PC up with the kit as what I really want is just a simple box that would use the raid as a massive flash card. (just to note here all vibration issues etc. have already been solved). Is there such hardware available? Camera is a top range Kodak, with PCMCIA (Type III?) and SCSI ports for connection." Don't panic! This isn't being used for spy purposes. Honestly!
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Storing Massive Images Direct from Digital Camera? More

Storing Massive Images Direct from Digital Camera?

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  • Actually, a lot of the new Kodak's do use FireWire for offloads. I worked in a photography shop (taking pictures - not developing them), and all of our high-end cameras used it.
    USB is still nice, though - I don't think that small-storage devices, like my Rio500 (arguable, tho), or straight comm devices, like a UPS fit into the 1394 arena. I LOVE the idea of firewire for DV and the like, but it seems to be overkill for the small-bandwidth requirements.
    My preference: No more IDE, SCSI, floppies, or old-fashioned serial or parallel ports. Legacy free means IEEE-1394 for the large transfer devices, USB for the small ones, and CD-ROM based everything (i.e. no more floppies). We'll see, though!
  • I purhcased a Kodak DC-260 (not the pro series... yet!) and remember seeing a "belt-pack" style device that would pull your images from the camera and store them on its own media until loading to the PC. I don't have the link any more, but it might be an answer to your needs.
    If not (or your connection doesn't mesh with the belt-pack's), what about just taking a laptop with a JAZ-2 drive on it? At 4-8Mb per image, that should do fine for 128-246 shots per cartrige, with the obvious option to add more cartriges. Since the JAZ drive uses SCSI (I used the Adaptec Slim-SCSI with a JAZ-1 for years with no problems), you could add the camera to the SCSI chain, plug in the PCMCIA card, offload the images, eject the card, and keep shooting. Send the laptop to power-save mode until you need it again. (If there is 12VDC power in the chopper, use a cigarette lighter adapter to power it...)
    Also, you could just use the HDD in the laptop, but I've found that JAZ storage is LOTS cheaper than 18Gb laptop drives.
    Let us know what you end up doing - it's a very interesting idea!!!
    Can I have a helicopter ride? ;)
  • I guess his camera only supports storage PCMCIA media - I never heard of a camera having several network file system (CIFS=SMB/NFS) builtin. But a nice idea though.

    I doubt a DigitalVideo camera will have sufficient resolution - another good idea for taking a massive number of pictures.

  • I'd run across the Digital Wallet [mindsatwork.net] yesterday and was goin to mention it. I haven't even seen a unit but it sounds like it would server as a temporary image store. Get a couple of huge PCMCIA cards so you don't have to swap them often, then dump them to a Digital Wallet or a Laptop PC.

    I do alot of digital photography. (Kodak DC210+) I've setup a cheep 486 laptop so when you plug in a compactflash card it copies all the pictures off of it and deletes them from the card after a sucessfull copy. It then shuts down. All I have to do is stick the compact flash card in the adapter card, stick it into the laptop then boot the laptop. All the rest is automatic. I even have it beep when it's done so I know when it's safe to remove the compact flash card.

    As for reliability of cards. ??? What's up? Them things are tough. I've stepped on them and not dammaged them. One rule of thumb, never force them into the socket. If it resists then flip and try again. You don't want to put them in backwards, seriously suboptimal.

    For off camera storage you will need to look at the profesional SLR models. I know a couple of them are designed to dump over a SCSI bus to a HD array. Mainly designed for studio work.

    Another thing to look at is camera capture software. I know some camers are able to be controled over their serial link. This includes taking a shot then immediatly downloading it. I don't know how prevalent this feature is, but if you had a USB hooked up camera you could easily do this and download 4M shots every couple seconds.

  • I think you'd be very well off using a Dig camera with USB, and a small laptop (such as a sony Vaio or Toshiba Libretto).

    Sure, its not raid, but unless you're intending doing aerobatics in the aircraft, the laptops will survive. (you /are/ keeping the aircraft in balance, aren't you?? :)
  • What the hell are you doing with them??

    Seriously, if your cards are being broken, theres no way your hard drives will survive in the same environment.

    I would suggest a super-fancy-ass pro digital camera that dumps 80MB TGA files directly over SCSI, but if youre shooting from a helicopter, the exposure times etc. and fiddliness of these cameras are probably too long to get any decent quality.

    Why not use a film-based SLR? Theyre pretty robust, and you can get a hell of a lot of photographs developed for the price of a shock-proofed RAID array.

    As another poster suggested, IBMS 340MB Microdrive would be a good option, as well as Iomega's Clik drive (40 MB each, with a drive the size of a PCMCIA card for downloading to a laptop or whatever)

    But again, if youre breaking PCMCIA cards/CF cards, youre doing something very, very wrong.

  • Minor clarification. The IBM Microdrive is a CompactFlash (CF) device. You can buy CF to PCMCIA adapters, though. And there is a new 1GB version due out soon.
  • We have 5 Kodak's DC265's
    Each has 2x 32 meg cards which have been used for over a year. We Just purchased 1x 64 meg cards for each camera. The biggest problem we have had is people bending the pins on the adapter but that is easy to fix. The adapter's are about $20 each.

    So just get a laptop and xfer the pics to the laptop. With 2 or 3 Large Cards and a laptop w/ a Jazz drive you should be set.
  • Thinking sideways as usual - why not invest in a GIS to run your camera with - and make it a goodie that can use wavelet compression to reduce the images to 1/20th of the size. Real techies will get in touch with MrSID! I spose a word with www.microimages.com for TNTmips (runs on Linux/Win/Mac/sun...) may prove to be productive. Slainte Torc

  • I hate to suggest a change of tack, but digital photography is one of those areas that changes so fast that a better/faster/cheaper way to do something may well pop up right after you implement an expensive solution to a problem.

    Case in point - the new Sony Mavica that writes directly to mini-CDs. There's a page here [sony.com] that will give you some basic info. ZD has a puff piece here [zdtv.com] that may also be of use.

    Frankly, this looks like a much better, much simpler, much cheaper, and, optionally, higher resolution way to meet your needs. Even if the thing isn't available yet, it'd be cheaper and easier to fly to Japan and get one than to do the sort of thing you're contemplating. You could even afford to get two so you'll always have a backup.

  • i suspect that perhaps he's taking the cards in and out of the camera. the connectors are pretty tough, but if you do it wrong, i suppose you COULD break a pin in the camera... well, that'd break the camera, not the card, woudln't it? :) Btw, they're keyed, stop plugging it in backwards.

  • Ask these guys [medeacorp.com] if their VideoRaid will hook up directly to a camera. It's currently set so that you can plug a RAID box straight into SCSI port and have the system see it as one hard drive.

    It's possible your camera will too. Then all you have to do is get a transformer from the chopper's power supply to 120VAC and maybe add a UPS.

    The one I've seen is RAID 0 (striping), but they may have RAID 1 (redundancy), 5 (parity) or 10 (redundancy + striping) if you ask.

    Frank.

  • Thanks everyone who took time to reply. I have to say I am a bit mystified by the flas card thing too as I am asking this question for a friend. I know that they get heavt use, as the application is taking digital images of such things as mining waste tips etc, and then processing these images to highlight any changes in the positioning of the tip (hopefully to get warning of imminent collapses etc). So there are a lot of pictures taken on one trip and a lot of trips.
  • I'm not too well-informed on SCSI, but isn't it possible to get some sort of bus-mastering hard drive (with an external power pack of some kind), and use the SCSI interface on the camera to write directly to the drive? I think the SCSI interface would be your best bet, in any case. Good Luck!
  • IBM's coming out with a 1 GB microdrive this fall. But you probably could do better storage-wise with a notebook PC that has a huge hard drive. It would be easier to answer if you gave us a ballpark of how much storage you want....
  • The first, which may not be viable, is to use that PCMCIA port to your advantage with either a wavelan card (distance is then limited to 800m outdoors) or perhaps one of those funky small Iomega drives (I forget what they are called right now).

    The second thought is perhaps explore writing direct to tape somehow. I see that most digital video cameras have the ability to take pictures too now, although I don't know how good the photos are, and they can store many many more pics than a digital camera.

    Of course both these solutions suffer from a lack of pre-built interface to the camera, so that you'll have to work out yourself. But considering you've built most of this thing already, I'm assuming that isn't too big a deal :)
  • If flash memory is too expensive, a spare laptop with a large hard drive might work well. My Kodak DC215 can be controlled to take pictures from the serial cable through a script. Additionally, parallel port hard drives work very well too. Mount a 40G hard drive and you could take pictures until the helicopter's next service. :)
  • IBM has a harddisc in PCMCIA-3 format with 340MB memory - sufficient for at least 50 of your pictures. Maybe that might be an option for you? Advantage over an SCSI solution: the camera can be used in the very normal way without cabling.

    If you opt for an SCSI solution, you might want to try the functionality (in a lab) on a simple single SCSI harddisc first. If you like the solution/handling, you might want to have a look at the IDE->SCSI RAID controllers for price/storage optimum.

    I guess you should mount the SCSI stuff into a vibration-insulating case for use in a helicopter. Maybe you will be able to find some of the 19" cases sold in musicians' stores suitable for your cause.

    A builtin power supply (UPS) is optional. And as you have to have a cable running to your camera, you might want to put additional batteries into the RAID case with the power supply chord running parallel to the SCSI cable to your camera.
  • Check out the Digital Wallet by Mindsatwork. It has some flaws, but if you have time to upload pictures between filling a disk or an assistant who can do it for you, then this looks like a good option:

    MindsAtWork [mindsatwork.net]
    Digital Wallet FAQ [mindsatwork.net]
    Digital Wallet Review [steves-digicams.com]

    I don't have anything to do with any of the above companies/sites. I am just a digital camera enthusiast who likes backpacking (and thus is looking for a similar solution, but compact). I am waiting for the second generation of these devices after reading the reviews though.
  • what i'd like to know is how you're breaking the flash card? :) they're rated for 2000 g's of force. that's something like a 10 foot fall onto concrete.. buy a bigass card, like 192 meg, and LEAVE IT IN THE CAMERA. anything that breaks the card, it broke YOU, and the camera LONG ago =)

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