Dear friends:
I need a freeware to calculate frontal area from a front photo of a rider on the bike. Other method could be with a image software to merge frames.
The objective is optimize the aero position.
Can you help me?
Regards
Milton
Here’s another “simpler” method: http://science.gcc.edu/mece/projects/2004/hpsprint/index_files/Design_Validation_Index_Files/Frontal_Area_Analysis_Report.pdf
-Scott
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Thank you, I think the cutting procedure is very complicated for bike positioning. I search a photo editor to merge frames.
Other procedure is dartfish software.
Regards
Milton
What are you trying to achieve? If you try to find the most aerodynamic setup based on frontal area I think you are wasting your time as aerodynamics is much more dynamic than static.
Depending on how often you want to do this, Photoshop has a trial period. Also, GIMP probably could do it----since Photoshop can.
I don’t know of any freeware. It would be straightforward to write a script that does simple bitmap thresholding (of luminance values) on a rider against a white backdrop, and then calculates the ratio of non-white versus white pixels. Assuming decent lighting, one could adjust the threshold to be quite accurate. Obviously, the more white the better and one could try tweaking aero positions to optimize this.
While aerodynamics is probably a lot more complicated than simple frontal area, it must be a big factor.
try a program called imageJ. It runs on java and is pretty simple, you calibrate the pixel count based on measuring something in the image and then just trace out the edge of the thing you want to measure the area of.