Can someone in eastern Australia use their backyard to make a huge clock that is readable from space? This way when Google Maps updates their imagery we can use your clock as a reference to find out where we were at that particular day and time.
** Got news for you pal - nearly all the images are taken from aircraft, mostly helicopters.
Pics taken from satellites are not near as detailed.
** Last pic I saw of where I live showed all the wheelie bins on the nature strip on a sunny day with their shadows pointing east - so it had to be a Monday arvo.
Your mad idea cannot work as the pics on Google Maps all have different dates.
With street view (note, this is NOT going to be taken at the same time as overhead pics), you could just put a sign with the date out the front and change each day (not practical), or lay out easily visible large items such as pots, blocks, suitably sized pieces of paper strategically stuck to inside of window etc in such a way to form a binary pattern that you can work out later from the pic on street view.
7 items (bits) would easily give you more than 365. that would cover each day of the year
Maybe if you were really keen for google satellite view, you could arrange (very large) items in your yard to form such a pattern. Items visible from overhead such as your car, kids trampoline, maybe bins, or similar could be positioned in patterns of different places each day to form a code.
Time can be determined roughly by examining the shadows.
Saw this a while back when visiting this town. If you take a look a couple of CM to the right of the words "riverside apartments" you can see a clock face in a front yard (looks like an upside down tick with white hands). This is an outdoor electric analog clock and reading it from the street if says 10-05. Note there are 4 bushes or small trees? on one side of the clock and 3 on the other.
Objects the size of these bushes could be arranged to form a binary pattern to indicate week/month or day as long as you remember to change them every day.
Are there any clocks like this in your area that you can look for in your google earth pic ?
Google places the street view purple road copy of Warf St., in the middle of "riverside apartments". It is out of alignment, like many of the purple road street views in some areas.
I was able to find the fascia of K.Meyer & Co, and count back. Eventually found the 3 bushes one side, and four the other. But on street view, there is no clock face.
Picture must have been taken before it was installed, or after it was removed.
Anyone you can't find the property, it is the one with workers plastic orange fence, or mesh, to the left of the property, and this has a site office caravan directly opposite.
So, having a look at the size of the bushes, yes, you could set out a grid in one yard, possibly using orange wheely bins on a grid.
Now you need a simple time-date code that everyone can read. Decimal will be a lot of bins, if you are talking about a minute to midnight on new years eve.
Cheers Don...
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Don McKenzie
Dontronics Blog: http://www.GodzillaSeaMonkey.com
With street view (note, this is NOT going to be taken at the same time as overhead pics), you could just put a sign with the date out the front and change each day (not practical), or lay out easily visible large items such as pots, blocks, suitably sized pieces of paper strategically stuck to inside of window etc in such a way to form a binary pattern that you can work out later from the pic on street view.
7 items (bits) would easily give you more than 365. that would cover each day of the year
7 bits gives you 128, you would need 9 bits.
Maybe if you were really keen for google satellite view, you could arrange (very large) items in your yard to form such a pattern. Items visible from overhead such as your car, kids trampoline, maybe bins, or similar could be positioned in patterns of different places each day to form a code.
Time can be determined roughly by examining the shadows.
" Although Google uses the word satellite, most of the high-resolution imagery is aerial photography taken from aircraft flying at 800-1500 feet rather than from satellites. "
Speaking of clocks - you could easily use electricity pole calibrated as a sundial - knowing the height would give you the month by the length of cast shadow and shadow position, time of day.
Now is the best time to start as the shortest day is June 22.
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