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I think it depends on the context - if you're designing the whole system from bar code to camera, I'm not sure that the color will help. But in that case you can assume close to perfect optics and I'm not sure if you would find an improvement or the opposite over a monochrome setup with better SNR.

On the other hand if you're stuck with things like mobile phone cameras, and can only control the bar code side, then Id imagine you'd see some improvements as you say.

An interesting middle ground would be if you could get the raw image from the sensor before a generic debayer algorithm gets applied.

Good luck, keep up the good work... i've worked commercially on optical barcode systems and it's a super interesting topic (tho looks like my post has been downvoted out of existence so maybe you wont see this).

Cameras only see one colour per pixel (i.e. Bayer colour filter array). Because our eyes are not so acute at resolving colour compared to luminescence this tradeoff works well.

But in this context I'm not sure at a pixel level how much 'extra' information is added by _removing_ red/green from the blue pixels, green/blue from the red etc.

In other words, if the image came from a digital camera, to actually stuff more information into the same number of pixels, colour may or may not help. In any case working with the raw CFA bayer source image would almost certainly be beneficial over interpreting the image after it has been converted to a normal RGB image (losing information in the process)

There is a real, if small, chance that there could be a general election in the UK soon and potentially a more favourable labour government. If I were Assange I would do whatever I could to hang in there at least long enough to rule that possibility out.

No I don't, my calculations at this stage are as follows:

Sail area - same as my 10 ton boat. Gets me to 7kts in a good strong wind.

Boat they intend to install it on: 110000 tons!

My point is that for this to have any impact at all, a massive amount of energy has to be extracted from the wind. An amount of energy that just doesn't exist in the volume of moving air they are talking about.

I'm still baffled by this.

I understand that, in fact probably uniquely to people on this thread I've been on a rotor sail boat (not sailing though, in dock).

They do work when the ratio of the sail area to the boat is appropriate. In the case of the one I went on it was a very efficient hull too - very light weight catamaran.

The ships in the article you link have huge sails on reasonably small ships. The ones suggested by Norsepower are absolutely tiny compared to the ship. They are, like i've said, about the same cross sectional area of a small pleasure sailing yacht on huge container ships.

My back of the napkin assumed all energy from the wind over the entire cross sectional area.

Magnus effect or not, i'm just dealing in orders of magnitude and for the average wind speeds on shipping routes, I just don't understand how this works even if 100% of the wind energy is extracted from the cross sectional area of the sail.

I really want this to be a thing, but my rough calculations given the total cross section area of the sail and the average wind conditions on shipping routes come out to as close to nil as makes any difference for ships these size.

I posted a very rough calculation on the last HN post about this and got downvoted for some reason. I guess everyone else wants this to be a thing so much they are happy to set aside physics through sheer force of will. HN people and the investors / instigators of this project.

This is one time I'm desperately wanting to find out I'm completely wrong.

My last post in a nutshell - these things are order of magnitude the same size as the sail on my own sail boat. Forget about the type of sail. Even if 100% of that wind energy was converted to forward motion it's going to do essentially nothing in the context of a big ship.

I build camera gear for 172s and fly (as passenger, not pilot) probably 20-30 days per year, sometimes much more, and I get nervous at <60kts at low altitude.

40kts IAS is I guess around the full flaps stall speed but you sure don't want to be doing that intentionally. At least not with me in the plane please.

Very thought provoking.

I'd like to add that this could be the case 'subconsciously' without him realizing or rationalizing it to himself.

Wow that was downvoted. I guess these people aren't aware of Nimoys extensive practical jokes with Shatner.

But even so, why would anyone downvote this?

Yea flight avionics, sort of. Aerial camera systems and the UI to control them.

Wow this covers a lot of my job, and is really concise and well written.

This might be the best link ever posted to HN for me. Thank you.