Astrophotography

I always assumed you had to buy a lot of expensive hardware, and sit outside all night pushing a cable remote shutter control to take pictures of the stars.

Thanks to modern cameras...you can if you want to...or just let the camera do the work.

There are websites and books dedicated to this subject...so I won't bother...however.

...unfortunately just as I was figuring all this out and getting my setup ready...a winter storm came to visit...so I won't be able to test my theories for a few days.

Here is what I know...
CHDK will let you make repeated shots at a set interval.
...it will let you set the shutter speed (and or aperture)

I have read that up to about 20-30 second exposure times will not show star streaking (from the earth movement)
There is free software that will 'stack' exposures (sort of like what the HDR software does)
I built a large battery pack to keep the camera running all night.

So my plan is to set the exposure to 20 sec, take pictures a minute apart all night long and see what happens.

Then from there change the exposure time until just below the streak threshold.

Not only can I get movies...I can stack the shots for more detail (hopefully).

Now this camera will only shoot for about a minute shutter open time. If I want more, I will need a new camera...and some way to keep the camera in position as the earth moves...

Some robotic...VR...etc links...

So one ongoing project is the ROVIO...well some third party applications have been written for it (as well as an iPhone app). Here are a couple that I haven't tried yet, but look interesting...

http://linceovr.seac02.it/pages/viewer/ ...basically use this to build a VR world with your ROVIO as the input, and your computer as the world generator.

http://www.roborealm.com/ software to allow your robot to use its camera(s) as vision...think the DARPA autonomous vehicles...ROVIO specific software here... http://www.roborealm.com/help/WowWee_Rovio.php

http://www.mikrokopter.de/ucwiki/en/MikroKopter a multi blade helicopter...microprocessor controlled...and seems like an easy (relatively) way to make an autonomous vehicle ($1000 for the basic unit)

Now back when I was a kid...I wanted one of these...Big Trak...you can get them n0w on ebay for not much money...and of course some folks are hacking on them...
http://www.robotroom.com/BigTrak.html
http://www.thebigtrak.com/board/index.php
replace the Big Trak controls with OOPic (site only on Wayback Machine)

How about a iPhone controlled hexapod?
http://forums.trossenrobotics.com/showthread.php?t=3918

HDR Time Lapse Video

This is something I didn't realize people were doing...or that I would be able to do with my little camera.

But thanks to Owen Scharlotte at Timelapseblog.com I learned a ton...

I previously mentioned CHDK and bracketing photos for HDR. Well here is how to install a script that will direct your camera to take a series of pictures...

And here is a tutorial on how to take that series of pictures into Photomatix for batch processing...

...and hopefully soon I will have a demo of my own from the back yard...

Other than loading the script, you still have to go into the CHDK menus and set up the bracketing in continuous mode. Other than that, it is point and shoot.