Grassroots Mapping is a series of participatory mapping projects involving communities in cartographic dispute. Seeking to invert the traditional power structure of cartography, the grassroots mappers used helium balloons and kites to loft their own “community satellites” made with inexpensive digital cameras.

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At Public Lab, we've grown the Grassroots Mapping community into a broader effort to enable communities to understand and respond to environmental threats with DIY techniques.

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Timeline of a Public Labs map project

May 8th, 2012 by Stewart Long

cross-posted from PBS's IdeaLab. How We Got Here: The Road to Public Lab's Map Project

Last week, Public Laboratory announced that public domain maps are now starting to show up on Google Earth and Google Maps. But how did the projects get there? Here's a timeline of a Public Laboratory map project.

MAKING A MAP

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Timeline of a Public Labs map project

May 8th, 2012 by Stewart Long

cross-posted from PBS's IdeaLab. How We Got Here: The Road to Public Lab's Map Project

Last week, Public Laboratory announced that public domain maps are now starting to show up on Google Earth and Google Maps. But how did the projects get there? Here's a timeline of a Public Laboratory map project.

MAKING A MAP

read more

PLOTS adoption of the CERN Open Hardware License

March 9th, 2012 by warren

Hello Public Labbers and Grassroots Mappers!

To date, the documentation and open science literature we've made as a community has been published under a Creative Commons ShareAlike license, allowing anyone to reuse, remix, adapt, improve, and redistribute our works. Today, the PLOTS Web working group would like to propose that we as a community adopt a separate license for our hardware designs, and after much consultation, we'd like to adopt the CERN Open Hardware License.

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Dual camera KAP rig

February 22nd, 2012 by cfastie

Here is a prototype rig that performed well on its maiden flight. The design might be appropriate for matched visible/IR cameras for vertical photography, like the Canon A495s from the Balloon Mapping Kickstarter project. For such a use, it would require the addition of an intervalometer to trigger both cameras simultaneously. I am not yet sure how to add that function.

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KAP Flight over Pacifica State Beach, CA

February 20th, 2012 by MicheleTobias

Alex Mandel, Michele Tobias, and a couple of others photographed the foredunes at Pacifica State Beach in Pacifica, CA, using a kite aerial photography rig. The kite was a Skyhook 30 outfitted with an SLR camera. The wind was strong - about 25-30 miles an hour - which allowed the kite to lift the heavier camera. The flight went well, but there were some minor concerns. The biggest concern was that this kite needs a more substantial tail than we had (a home-made drogue tail about 15 inches long) in higher winds to keep it from waggling back and forth, swinging the camera.

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Picavet PET rig

February 5th, 2012 by mathew

A Picavet rig is a very common type of KAP/BAP rig, I've added it to the juice bottle in a fairly simple way, using 1/2" key rings.

Picavet Juice bottle

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Lima, Peru: Kite Making/Ballon Mapping Workshop, U. of San Marcos

February 2nd, 2012 by anita

We held a Ballon Mapping and Kite Making Workshop on the Campus of San Marcos on Jan. 28, 2012 with a group of about 10 people from: Open Street Map Peru, Saberes Nomadas, and San Marcos Univ. (physics, geography, sociology, and geographic engineering depts.)

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Efficient Image Sorting with Finder & Preview (Mac)

January 30th, 2012 by mathew

I've made an instructional video on efficient image sorting with Preview and Finder, for quickly winnowing down big groups of images to small sets, ready for MapKnitter:

using a knot to trigger cameras

January 29th, 2012 by mathew

This is for use with the PET Bottle Rig

Instead of using a balled up piece of tape, a pebble, or some other thing to hold down my camera's shutter, I've gone to using a knot. This makes it easy to hold in place, and makes setting it easier. I prefer a rubber band, but tape also holds it down. tape may be more useful for bulging, non rectangular cameras.

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