Oracle is the name of a
model rocket
A model rocket is a small rocket designed to reach low altitudes (e.g., for a model) and #Model rocket recovery methods, be recovered by a variety of means.
According to the United States National Association of Rocketry, National Associati ...
with built-in digital
camera
A camera is an instrument used to capture and store images and videos, either digitally via an electronic image sensor, or chemically via a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. As a pivotal technology in the fields of photograp ...
, manufactured by
Estes Industries
Estes Industries is a model rocket company that was started in Denver, Colorado, USA.
History
Estes Industries was founded by Vernon Estes in 1958; in 1961, the company moved to a 77-acre tract of land on the outskirts of Penrose, Colorado. I ...
, for
aerial photography
Aerial photography (or airborne imagery) is the taking of photographs from an aircraft or other flight, airborne platforms. When taking motion pictures, it is also known as aerial videography.
Platforms for aerial photography include fixed-wi ...
.
In contrast to the camera rocket
Astrocam, the Oracle allows the making of a complete film of a rocket flight. The Oracle is best flown with a D12 engine (see
Estes number coding), but can be flown with C11 engines.
During launch, the camera films downward; showing the launch pad and engine exhaust during ascent. The rocket's nose cone may be attached to the parachute in two ways; there are attachments on both ends of the nose cone. Attaching the parachute to the bottom films the parachute during descent. Attaching the parachute to the top films the approach of the ground during descent.
The nose-cone attaches to a
PC via
USB
Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard, developed by USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), for digital data transmission and power delivery between many types of electronics. It specifies the architecture, in particular the physical ...
. The resulting
AVI file contains approximately 30 (between 30 and 35) seconds of
uncompressed video
Uncompressed video is digital video that either has never been compressed or was generated by decompressing previously compressed digital video. It is commonly used by video cameras, video monitors, video recording devices (including general-pur ...
at 9
frame/s at a
resolution of 320
pixels
In digital imaging, a pixel (abbreviated px), pel, or picture element is the smallest addressable element in a raster image, or the smallest addressable element in a dot matrix display device. In most digital display devices, pixels are the sma ...
wide by 240 pixels high (320x240). The data rate is 2047
kbit/s
In telecommunications, data transfer rate is the average number of bits ( bitrate), characters or symbols ( baudrate), or data blocks per unit time passing through a communication link in a data-transmission system. Common data rate units are mu ...
. The camera holds only one video at a time.
References
External links
Example of an oracle rocket flight on
YouTube
YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...
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Estes Oracle Flight
Model rockets
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