Lake Monticello eploration open data: 3D bathymetric chart

Hi all,

this second, brief post is intended to share other open data regarding our underwater archaeology mission in the inland waters of Trentino (Italy). 

As you know, this summer, we joined the exploration of the lake Monticello (almost 2600 m asl, near Paradiso Pass), looking for evidences of the WW1 in the Adamello front. If you missed the post, I described here the new methodology we used to achieve a complete 3D bathymetric chart, using just a low-cost sonar sensor. Today I just uploaded on our server the 3D data, so that other researchers can use them, if they will find them of some interest.

Here below I post a screenshot of the data loaded within +QGIS:

The bathymetric chart of Lake Monticello

Here is possible to download the 3d bathymetric chart of Lake Monticello. As always the data are available with the following license:

Lake Monticello 3D bathymetric chart by Arc-Team is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

I hope this data will be useful. Have a nice day!

Aerial images and videos of the WW1 trenches along the border between Austria and Italy

Hi all,

in the first days of October 2014, after a rainy summer, we have been engaged in taking aerial pictures and videos of the WW1 trenches in the border between Austria and Italy (villages of Kartitsch, Sexten/Sesto Pusteria and Comelico Superiore). The work was insert into a survey project financed by INTERREG funds. The trenches and military structures in the area of the project were mapped using a GPS (Trimble 5700); the most important and better preserved buildings were documented using different software (PPT, MicMac and OpenMVG) and particular hardware (aerial drone).

Thanks to Walter Gilli, our "flight instructor and drone developer", we have a new hexacopter that you can see in the picture below.

The main components are:

- a DJI NAZA-M V2 as flight controller

- a Spektrum DX8 as radio control

- a Sony Nex-7 as camera (24.3 megapixels)

- a StratoSnapper2 for the remote control of the camera (radio/IR)

- an Alexmos Gimsbal controller (2 axis) to stabilize the camera mount

- all mounted on a handmade frame

The video below shows the hexacopter flying in windy conditions. The high quality of the components makes this hexacopter a perfect instrument even in extreme situation.

The video below shows the a flight in optimal condition: a cloudy day without wind. The gimbal stabilizes the camera even during movements, ensuring a high quality result.

Polygontool

Hi all,

this fast post is intended to be an overview of the new open source software Polygontool, an application our friend +Szabolcs Köllö (aka +keulemaster) developed for Arc-Team. This tool is helping us in defining an automatic data processing protocol, in order to directly convert raw data files (collected with RTK GPS or total station during survey campaigns) into GIS readable formats. Currently the tool is under an hard test phase, being used during an interreg project (leaded by +Rupert Gietl) about the Great War between the Austrian and Italian border, but it had already positive effects on our work-flow, reducing the time expensive operations of manual data processing. The short video below is a demo to explain how the software works and what it can do.

The source code (in Python) can be found on github and it is already usable (if you want to test it) and open to contributions (if you want to help us in the development). Currently the configuration files (in the "config" folder) are optimized for our interreg project, but you can, of course, modify the terminology to make them fit to any other archaeological database.

Soon I will post other reports about Polygontool. By now I hope this preview will be useful for some of you (and maybe for us, if someone will join the project).

Have a nice day!