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The Gigapan Epic is the little robot that’s enabled me to take pictures on a scale that’s simply nuts, but I’ve been disappointed with the battery performance.  I think this stems from the fact that the device uses voltage as a proxy for capacity and in that I use rechargeable batteries, I max out at 7.2 volts rather than the proper 9.  My solution was to mount two four-cell battery packs giving me a more reasonable 9.6 volts off of the 1.2 volt rechargeable batteries.  The device was finished at around 9 PM and I showed my housemates my accomplishment.

Tenant: Did you do that on purpose?
Me: Do what?
Tenant: Us two 4-up battery holders spread across the bottom.
Me: I needed the split so the batteries wouldn’t get in the way of the camera.
Tenant: It looks like your thing has balls.

Proving that in all devices, balls are really the source of power.

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I love my little panoramic-making robot.  I tried to do one today of lunch at a Scouting event but there was a bit too much movement for the shot to turn out clearly and there were a lot of decapitated people and disembodied heads.  Anyway, I took the device to camp to do a pano at sunset, but ran out of charge after the rechargeable batteries had taken two panos for over 800 pictures.  Fine work in my book.  Anthony opened the trading post and I got 6 new “Super Heavy Duty” batteries.  They felt light but I figured I’d give them a try.

Guesses how many shots they lasted?

6.

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My birthday gift this year is a little photography robot called a Gigapan.  One places a point-and-shoot digital camera on the base, calibrated the setup, and the stand will go to town and take a crap-ton of pictures and stitch them together with an the included software.  Here was my first test:


Use the zoom slider and your mouse to poke around.

The next two taken at Arcadia University came out a bit nicer. The one below is made of about 200 pictures.

My favorite was taken at an Arcadia hardscape and consists of 400 pictures or so and generated a 2.5GB tiff file.

These are nice, but still pales compared to others composed of hundreds more images.

Teejay had the novel idea of doing a “Where’s Waldo?” gigapixel take involving costume changes at a sports stadium or some other large venue. Who’s interested?