Ask HN: How could I improve on my fun project? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How could I improve on my fun project?

8 pointsnagyf3 comments

Hi,

I created a project for learning purposes and having fun. I have a Raspberry Pi with a camera, looking out my apartment window. It takes a picture every minute, and uploads it to a server. Every day I concat those images to create a time-lapse video, like this: https://hn-share-bucket.s3.amazonaws.com/example.mp4

The whole thing is automatized, it has been running in the past 3-4 months without problems, I have around 90 videos now and tons of images.

Now I'm looking for ideas what could I do with these images/videos? Do you have any fun project idea?

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Some ideas from top of my head:

  - Add a clock overlay.
  - Add actual temperature overlay
    - Bonus points for using an on-board sensor.
  - Add a wind overlay.
    - Bonus points for using an on-board sensor.
  - Identify any passing object (e.g.: plane, helicopter), detect it.
    - If there are no planes, run a general purpose object detector and see what it detects.
    - If you detect any thing of interest, take more photos for some periods to create a slow-mo effect.
  - Wild idea: Try to somehow track the progress of the building. Mark the previous day's height on the video.
  - Wild idea: If the camera allows for fast bursts, take three shots when light is good and merge to HDR video.
  - Try to post-process images to improve noise, colors, contrast and dynamic range.

These are some really good ideas, thanks for posting. I especially like the overlays, and the slow-mo effect idea.

HDR also seems interesting, I am not sure if the Pi's camera supports fast bursts but I will look into it.

I don't know why I haven't thought about post processing yet, seems like a must, probably I'll start with this.

Check out the movie Koyaanisqatsi they have a lot of similar time lapse segmentsa with interesting subjects, angles, lighting, as well as scored to music. It might give you some inspiration.

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