Kickstarting Mini Balloon and Kite Mapping Kits for everyone


Jeff writes, "7 years after 'grassroots mapping' the BP spill when journalists were denied access, the open source community Public Lab is back with an even more accessible Do-It-Yourself way to take aerial photos: the Mini Balloon and Kite Mapping Kits."


At half the cost of the original, these are designed for portability and for a new generation of smaller GoPro-like cameras that's now available. And the Kite kit makes use of an extremely compact (but octopus-shaped) kite with no spars.

This isn't a typical Kickstarter — Public Lab has run four of these open source campaigns, where folks are asked to pitch in to solve problems, teach one another, and take the kit of parts to new places. That kind of radical cooperation is how Public Lab started, and that's why this project has gone in such a unique direction over the years.

Kickstarter Gold: Balloon Mapping Kits
[Public Lab/Kickstarter]