KAPture¶ ↑

A rails application for remote capturing of pictures using GPhoto.

This application runs on any Linux machine, windows not tried yet, and was intended to run on a Beagleboard for use in a KAP setup (kite aerial photograpy).

If the installation seems a bit difficult, I plan to make available a disk image for the beagleboard that can be put on a memory card and run directly on a Beagleboard.

Functionality¶ ↑

KAPture offera a web interface to the camera. The intenden use is to have th camera and a small linux computer (beagleboard) on a kite. The linux computer has a usb WLAN adapter configured with an adhoc network. On the ground, using a standard phone, you can connect to the adhoc network and capture images using buttons on a web page. Currently KAPture has the following functionality:

• Capture an image

• Capture many images automatically, continuously updating previews

• Download previews and fullsize images

• Automatic conversion of RAW images to JPEG for browsing

• Automatic scaling of images to save bandwidth

• Delete all images on camera

• Delete all images on linux computer

• Change camera settings such as image format (RAW/JPEG/compression), aperture etc. This is still a bit sketchy but works well for many settings. Many times the availability of a setting depends on which mode the camera dial is in.

• Browse images captured during the session

Installation¶ ↑

You will need to install the following commands

• git

• dcraw (executable in standard folder /usr/bin)

• cjpeg (executable in standard folder /usr/bin)

Also, the following gems

• RubyInline

• jeweler

• rails

• hoe

• rspec

• will_paginate

• thin

• sqlite3-ruby

• haml

Install any other gems as they are reported missing ;-)

Two gems must be installed from github:

cd ~
sudo apt-get install libgphoto2-2-dev
git clone git://github.com/tallakt/gphoto4ruby.git
cd gphoto4ruby
git fetch origin eos_40D_bugs:eos_40D_bugs
git checkout -b eos_40D_bugs
sudo rake install

cd ~
sudo apt-get install libfreeimage-dev libfreeimage3
git clone git://github.com/tdd/image_science.git
cd image_science
sudo rake install_gem

Clone the project from GitHub

cd ~
git clone git://github.com/tallakt/kapture.git
cd kapture

To generate the production database run the following commands from the

RAILS_ENV=production rake db:create
RAILS_ENV=production rake db:migrate

Install the daemon services for thin and kaptured. The kaptured daemon will handle communication with the camera

rake daemon:install

It will now start with the machine, to start it now type

sudo /etc/init.d/kaptured
sudo /etc/init.d/kaptured start

sudo /etc/init.d/thin
sudo /etc/init.d/thin start

At this stage, if everything went well, point yout browser to your machine name or ip address and plug in your camera to the USB port.

Running in development mode¶ ↑

Running in development mode is simple.

cd ~/kapture
rake db:create
rake db:migrate
thin start

In a separate window type

cd ~/kapture
script/runner lib/kaptured/kaptured.rb run

Log files and pid files should go in the log folder.