the distance moved by one of the Breiðamerkurjökull nodes shows us the glacier has started moving again – at a rate comparable to the previous autumn. Its also great that this prototype node has sent data so continuously – right through the winter!
We captured thousands of images using a quadcopter, Survey 3 camera and then created the model with Agisoft Photoscan. Calibration targets on the ground geo-referenced the model. This fly-through is a screen capture from their viewer. The model-making process took around five days on a quad-core 4.4GHz PC. Models will be produced each year to monitor changes but they also help visualise moraine formation. The images captured were about 7mm/pixel resolution.
Here is a quick snapshot of some data from the new Fjalls site:
It is already approaching 2m distance from its original location – also the jitter on the positions is very small.
This is temperature from Rover4’s Peli case, which is the heighest on Breida and is showing good variations (X axis starts in August).
The little Brinno camera we left on a monopod last October 2017 continued capturing images until the 9th of June 2018. Here is a frame from a sunny morning in March showing how much the ice drives over the moraine:
The camera managed this on four lithium AA batteries.
This is a screenshot of the 3D model made of Fjalsjokull (using Agisoft Photoscan) with the images we captured in 2017 with our 3DR Solo/Mapir Survey2 camera.
This long term plot for Breida’ show the number of satellites used for each fix. It shows the normal variation due to their paths in the sky. It is quite consistent throughout the winter.
In preparation for deploying more systems in Iceland this summer – I updated our spare Piksi Multis and did a garden test. It performed very well!
I set them up to fix at 10Hz but report every 5 readings – so its closer to our slow system in Iceland. The fix hopped around within about 1.5cm – which is good for my garden as the sky box is not that wide.
Since fixing the Fjalls system we have a steady stream of data – showing the glacier moving:
This shows a movement of around 1.5m in just ten days.
These new dGPS units seem to be accurate to around 2cm as shown in our test. This is for a close baseline (and at the moment doesn’t use GLONASS).
Testing the Piksi Multi from Swift Navigation. North/East relative position of rover – in a 96s test in an open space. The readings are quoted as accurate to 0.023m H 0.037m V.