As mentioned in the introduction, the clue is to make user-friendly
software that is easy to use and quick to operate. This is due to
the fact that an operator onboard an airborne carrier has little or no
time to multi process all the information. Flying over the target may
take only a few seconds, and the operator is then occupied with the
camera. As soon as the picture is taken, time, position and speed of
the airplane are automatically added to the image from the GPS.
The operator is then ready to compress and send the data either as
an E-mail or to a web server by Ftp or Scp.
Note that the type of camera is not only limited to PC - connected
video grabbing or digital USB devices. The use of a digital SLR
camera connected directly to a GPS, such as the Nikon D1X, works
very good. In this case, the Exif header of the original JPEG image
contains GPS information that is extracted by our software onto the
compressed image. The compact flash memory card is simply taken
out of the camera body and plugged into a card reader that is
connected to the PC. The whole procedure is quick and easy to do
and enables us to choose from a whole range of cameras.
In fact, a digital SLR camera without GPS can also be used as long
as the internal clock is synchronized with an external GPS. The GPS
information is then extracted from the log file of the GPS.
3 programs have been compiled for windows in Delphi to meet the
above requirements.
| No. | Program | Description |
| #1 | Svaltrack II |
Calculates Sun and Moon position at any world location. Input: NMEA GPS.
Options: Moving map, Textures, GPS Clipboard Server and more.
|
| #2 | DirectXCamera |
Video grabber compatible with any DirectX devices.
If used together with SvaltrackII, each image contain a video overlay of GPS time,
position and speed.
|
| #3 | Svalview II |
Program to view JPG images. The aim is to quickly select area of interest,
resize and compress large images on the fly. It can also read Exif information.
The resulting images are labelled with time and position. Position is obtained
from the Exif header, a GPS-track log or in real-time from a GPS.
The images are then transferred either by FTP, SCP or E-mail.
The program is compatible with SvalTrackII. |