Reader request: Mac-Friendly Version of Make's Balloon Imaging Satellite Project

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By Mark Frauenfelder
Posted 2011/07/21 @ 3:39 pm
Category General

Jason Miller writes: I’m trying to get the ‘Helium Balloon Imaging Satellite‘ project working from Make Magazine (vol. 24). The project appears not to be very OS X friendly, however. Building the PICAXE controller required time on a Windows PC, and now it looks like I’m not going to be able to download pics from an Aries keychain camera to my OS X laptop.

“Can anyone point me in a direction to get this to work? Some seventh graders are counting on me.”

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3 Responses to Reader request: Mac-Friendly Version of Make's Balloon Imaging Satellite Project

Joe on July 21st, 2011 at 11:22 pm said:

Jason, or Mark, I checked out the PICAXE site and they do have a mac version of their software called axpad. There is a version for PPC and intel based macs.

Once you trigger your camera, you should be able to download the images to the mac. Depends on if the camera has a removable memory card for images or build in memory card. You should be able to interface the camera with a standard USB cable. Again depends on what camera you have.

I do not have access to the entire article, If there is another issue, (I am making some educated guesses on what your actual problem is) please indicate.

Thanks

Joe Pitz
j_pitz@yahoo.com

Reply ↓
- Belinda Slocumb on July 22nd, 2011 at 12:00 am said:
  
  It looks like that camera has internal memory. I have had issues with a very similar camera before- not just with Mac compatibility but with quality/reliability. I’d highly recommend a different camera if you can get one inexpensively that will work and will fit in your enclosure. If you still need to use that camera, don’t worry about getting the images off of it. You probably know of PCs all over the place that you may be able to borrow five minutes of time on, probably even your local library might allow you to attach the camera and pull images off onto a usb drive. Even the copy centers in office supply shops might be able to do a quick swap for you. Find a high spot somewhere if you can and test that camera first. I think everything else on your project will get sorted out rather quickly. Please report back to us on your results if you can- we’d love to see the pics!
  
  Reply ↓
Joe on July 21st, 2011 at 11:22 pm said:

Jason, or Mark, I checked out the PICAXE site and they do have a mac version of their software called axpad. There is a version for PPC and intel based macs.

Once you trigger your camera, you should be able to download the images to the mac. Depends on if the camera has a removable memory card for images or build in memory card. You should be able to interface the camera with a standard USB cable. Again depends on what camera you have.

I do not have access to the entire article, If there is another issue, (I am making some educated guesses on what your actual problem is) please indicate.

Thanks

Joe Pitz
j_pitz@yahoo.com

Reply ↓