Joe Barnard is the man behind several rockets that do far more than just launch and crash. What set him apart is his ability to take ideas typically designated for full-fledged space initiatives and scale them back down to considerably smaller sizes. His most recent creation is a little camera pod that pops out of the rocket’s side at its highest altitude and records the entire scene.
This small pod weighs about 100 grams and rides on a guided booster, nestled inside a custom-built fiberglass nose cone. It is maintained in place via a spring-loaded system. That’s what will be released when the rocket reaches its highest point, which is about ten kilometers up. When it’s released, the little camera swings around, pokes its lens in the direction of the rocket, and begins shooting in super-high-resolution slow motion.
Sale
DJI Osmo 360 Essential Combo, 360 Camera with 1-Inch 360° Imaging, Native 8K 360° Video, 4K/120fps…
- Big Views, Brilliant Quality – Groundbreaking 1-inch 360° imaging [1] delivers excellent low-light for sharper shots on every adventure. Now with…
- Stunning, Day or Night – Capture every detail with 8K 360° videos. Whether you’re exploring city nights or chasing sunrise, your 360 camera delivers…
- No Pole, All Action – 1.2m Invisible Selfie Stick turns your Osmo 360 into a cameraman that follows you. Shoot super-smooth 4K/120fps and magical…
The prototype pods he created were small objects made of plastic with ceramic bearings to let them glide out easily, but this presented a host of complications. The bearings created a lot of slop, and the pod tipped all over the place just as it was about to descend. Joe went back to the drawing board and attempted to find a solution, but it wasn’t until he totally removed the bearings that he saw a way forward. He reasoned that something as simple as lubricant would make the pod slide out more smoothly, but it wasn’t long before dirt and grime accumulated, and things only got worse. So it was back to square one, and Joe tried a few different approaches. But at first it didn’t seem to be working and it wasn’t until he started having a play with the shape of the pod itself by adding a couple of minor chevrons to stop it tilting over that he started to make some real progress.
He also tried inserting a central push rod right through the middle of the pod, which appeared to help with the twisting forces created by the off-center spring, but the rod itself continued to flex and bend in all the wrong places. The servo arm problem was not getting any better, but it was progressively improving as Joe worked through iteration after iteration to perfect the pod’s ejection on the ground. Then, just as all hope seemed to be fading, Joe came up with a way to turn things around, inserting a little brass flywheel inside the pod, powered by a high-speed motor and functioning as a gyroscope to keep the camera stable, and to his surprise, it made all the difference. Even in turbulent air, the camera remained solidly focused.
The extra weight of the flywheel was well worth it, as active controls like response wheels or gas jets would have required too much room and power. The small GoPro inside captured some of the finest images he’d ever seen, far outperforming what a 360 camera could provide after some cropping. When the pod falls off the back of the rocket, it falls ballistically and hits the ground at speeds ranging from 40 to 50 miles per hour, but that’s okay because the SD card inside is properly protected, and the GPS tracker with inertial sensors still manages to cough up location data all the way down, even if the signal goes out and it has to switch to dead reckoning. The entire system is so compact that you can take the occasional jolt as a little price to pay for the sharp third-person vision.
[Source]
