Random thought: If you stick a very small adhesive mirror to the outside window before boarding, then footage "looking down" at the regularly-spaced railroad ties could contribute to information about the current speed and acceleration.
Well, on a straight section anyway, if you turn, the inner/outer edges will appear differently-spaced...
Wouldn't do anything positive in terms of suspicious staff though. They might think it's like some kind of heist-movie that will involve a specialized glass cutter making a circle on the window.
When I read the title I thought of another IDEA that I've had bumping around in my head that would be pretty cool.
Put down two model railroad straightaways next to each other, with two locomotives, use them as a base to attach a 3d-printer arm across and "print" a model railroad diorama, incrementally moving the locomotives to print each slice.
In other words, a flatbed 3d printer where one axis is the locomotives moving across your railroad layout. I think it could rejuvenate model railroads if you could print mountains, towns, streambeds, roads, etc...
A big part of the joy of model railroading is the building of such things, at least for some people.¹ It’s less about the product than the process. That’s a big part of why things like kitbashing and scratch building are popular. Finding a way to construct something out of nothing.
⸻
1. Yes, there are people who are more into the operations side of things, but I think for most model railroaders it’s as much about the building as the running.
It would have been pretty easy to use a horizontal line scanner to get image speed.
In any case, it seems that using a full frame video would be much easier to post process since frame to frame correlation tells you everything you need to know about motion.
The first attempt was with video, but she later switched to exactly that, a 19000 lines per second 2048 pixel line scan imager. It was augmented with 6dof acceleration/gyro sensor, gps, and microcontroller to get the data to a laptop.
well, they used film, which made it very easy to implement.
this is easy with a roll of film and a slit for an exposure window. you have the lens and the aperture and focus and all of that, but instead of a full frame, you mask it down to a small slit. slowly pull the film across the slit when it's time to capture your target. captures are limited only by how much film you can fit on a reel and feed through the camera during flight. I would expect that miles of film could be carried on the SR-71 without problems. You'd need (I assume) some custom machines to develop that film properly and to produce prints, but that's not a challenge for an entity that can design and build an SR-71.
Random thought: If you stick a very small adhesive mirror to the outside window before boarding, then footage "looking down" at the regularly-spaced railroad ties could contribute to information about the current speed and acceleration.
Well, on a straight section anyway, if you turn, the inner/outer edges will appear differently-spaced...
Wouldn't do anything positive in terms of suspicious staff though. They might think it's like some kind of heist-movie that will involve a specialized glass cutter making a circle on the window.
Why not just use phones GPS?
In the presentation they mention they are using GPS, and also an accelerometer.
In a Faraday cage?
Basically the inverse of https://daniel.lawrence.lu/photos/ or https://trains.jo-m.ch/ ;)
Also reminds me of the work by Adam Magyar, high-speed filming of people as the train arrives:
https://vimeo.com/123336197
https://www.magyaradam.com/wp/?page_id=596
The former is in the prior art section at 2:24!
I've played with panorama mode and tried both of these (1 - panorama of moving train passing platform, 2 - panorama out window of a moving train)
...and both got the same weird artifacts, as it piled "similar" slices together then jumbled up "complex" slices.
Too bad they can't have a toggle for time-slice based panorama vs scene-based panorama. or maybe turn on accelerometer optimizations or not.
Free slit scan photograph apps exist
When I read the title I thought of another IDEA that I've had bumping around in my head that would be pretty cool.
Put down two model railroad straightaways next to each other, with two locomotives, use them as a base to attach a 3d-printer arm across and "print" a model railroad diorama, incrementally moving the locomotives to print each slice.
In other words, a flatbed 3d printer where one axis is the locomotives moving across your railroad layout. I think it could rejuvenate model railroads if you could print mountains, towns, streambeds, roads, etc...
A big part of the joy of model railroading is the building of such things, at least for some people.¹ It’s less about the product than the process. That’s a big part of why things like kitbashing and scratch building are popular. Finding a way to construct something out of nothing.
⸻
1. Yes, there are people who are more into the operations side of things, but I think for most model railroaders it’s as much about the building as the running.
You need a fairly precise movement mechanism for 3D printing.
Good thing we have those!
I love this so much! This is such a cool hack, just for the sake of it. Amazing hacking and amazing art!
In the preso, she has said the full size output is on the website-
can anyone see what that link is? I didn't find it on the video page, but I might've just missed it.
http://philo.gay/linecam/gallery.html -- it's linked within the middle of the talk.
https://philo.gay/linecam/
Random thought: if you stick a camera to each train you might know their location better than Deutsche Bahn does.
Since at least you know where it was when you put the camera on it?
Using the camera as a scanner has a long history in satellite cameras and other aerial photography
It would have been pretty easy to use a horizontal line scanner to get image speed.
In any case, it seems that using a full frame video would be much easier to post process since frame to frame correlation tells you everything you need to know about motion.
One of the first scripts I vibecoded did exactly this. It works well, but is limited by framerate when there's high motion.
The first attempt was with video, but she later switched to exactly that, a 19000 lines per second 2048 pixel line scan imager. It was augmented with 6dof acceleration/gyro sensor, gps, and microcontroller to get the data to a laptop.
I'm not sure that video would have been easier to postprocess. At what fps and shutter speed?
they need to connect with the skunkworks team, they solved this problem on sr 71 long time back !
well, they used film, which made it very easy to implement.
this is easy with a roll of film and a slit for an exposure window. you have the lens and the aperture and focus and all of that, but instead of a full frame, you mask it down to a small slit. slowly pull the film across the slit when it's time to capture your target. captures are limited only by how much film you can fit on a reel and feed through the camera during flight. I would expect that miles of film could be carried on the SR-71 without problems. You'd need (I assume) some custom machines to develop that film properly and to produce prints, but that's not a challenge for an entity that can design and build an SR-71.