Sign in / up

back to article PARIS hacked Canon test (almost) runs on rails

A break in the dismal spring weather yesterday allowed the Reg's Paper Aircraft Released into Space (PARIS) team to run an outdoor test on the main payload Canon PowerShot A560. PARIS: Sponsored by Peer 1 The camera has been given the Canon Hack Development Kit treatment which allows us to run a BASIC script intervalometer, …

COMMENTS

House rules Send corrections
This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. sspraetz

    familiar place

    that looks very similar to the hills I train with my ride.... ávila region... spain

    0 0
  2. Rumcajz

    Clever...

    You are testing it in Spain because of the Icelandic volcano ash?

    0 0
  3. spaxe
    Thumb Up

    avila, spain?

    Wow, you really went far to test the system... were you afraid of the icelandic dust?

    Now, that's perfect, trying to spot the google streetview spymobile was getting old... now we can look for the PARIS command vehicle!

    0 0
  4. GottaBeKidding

    I have one of these.

    The A560 has very poor "low battery" performance. It pretty much doesn't work with rechargables, normal AAs are also not particularly great. Highly recommend high performance lithium non-rechargables or getting a less braindead camera.

    0 0
  5. The Indomitable Gall

    Houston, we have a problem.

    I don't know if it's the camera or your script, but the road appears in mirror image, with the command vehicle appearing to be driving on the wrong side of the road....

    1 0
  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Y Viva España?

    It appears that one of you convinced the boss to send you on holiday to central Spain to test this out... :-)

    0 0
  7. Ian McNee
    Boffin

    Large payload?

    Maybe I'm being a bit picky but are you sure a paper aeroplane is capable of supporting a 4x4 with a camera attached to the dash?

    4 0
  8. Dogbed
    Coat

    RegView Rocks

    Bet they're having sleepless nights in Mountain View...

    0 0
  9. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Probably was the batteries

    The Canon Powershots are notorious for caning the battery and switching off when they've still (theoretically) got a load of charge. I am *amazed* you got 45 minutes out of it.

    I did a seven day timelapse with an A560 a while ago, and ended up hooking the thing to a car battery via a cigarette voltage convertor. It worked a treat!

    1 0
  10. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    I'd still like to know...

    how you conned the editor to allow you to do this testing in Spain!!!

    0 0
  11. Stephen 2
    FAIL

    FIRST!

    lame. waste of space post

    0 1
  12. Rob 101

    How about going for the next PUSH event

    The kite one was cool (http://blogs.nokia.com/pushn900/) but the first N900 on space would be excellent. You could also use it to record all the accelerometer data and possibly GPS as well.

    0 0
  13. mariushm

    Memory leak

    Most likely reason for camera powering off is some memory leak.

    Some Canon camera models have very little ram memory and each time scripts run and do memory allocations and de-allocations the memory gets a little bit more fragmented so in the end there's just not enough continuous memory space to allocate for snapping a picture and in the end the firmware just calls it quits.

    0 0
  14. Adrian Esdaile
    Boffin

    Battery life with modded firmware

    Just a field report of my own: The modded Canon firmware, while very nice, really chews up your battery. Furthermore, unless you took the time to properly calibrate the modded firmware's battery stats measurements, it might not be reporting the battery correctly anyway.

    My testbed is an Ixus 850 - it lasts for about 48 hours for about 1,000 shots on standard firmware, about 3 hours for maybe 100 shots on the modded firmware.

    0 0
  15. David Sidebotham
    Jobs Horns

    We hope you enjoyed your Spanish holiday..

    .. up above the snow line to, but frankly it was to much like a bad home movie. I think you could have done better with Streetview.

    0 0
This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like