Trebor1
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Regular Member
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Posts: 401
Re: Basic DIY camera for educational use
1
bgstcola wrote:
Hello
I'm a physics teacher and I wander if it is possible to build a simple digital camera for teaching. I'm looking for something with a single lens, a sensor (possibly on a pcb) and a cardboard body. Of course the camera would take terrible pictures, but that's not the point. The pictures could be barely recognizable. I just want something low level that illustrates how a camera work with optics, sensors, etc. All I have been able to find are projects with complete camera modules or projects were you just put the camera together like furniture from Ikea.
Does anyone know of such a low level diy camera project?
Thanks
There are several projects that use the sensor from an optical computer mouse as a crude digital camera. In some of these the mouse sensor only has 18x18 pixels but there is a later version of this type of sensor that has 30x30 pixels which would be more useful: The original John Logie Baird mechanically scanned TV system. used in the UK in the early 1930s, had 30 lines and was (just about) good enough to recognise a human face.
https://www.bidouille.org/hack/mousecam
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_television
Similar projects can be found on YouTube and elsewhere, with a bit of Googling.
And the higher resolution optical mouse sensor (30x30 pixels). This sensor seems to be also used as a motion-flow optical sensor on some DIY drones and is available on a small PCB with lens assembly but you may want to experiment with different focal lengths.
https://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?catId=0&initiative_id=SB_20150222023845&SearchText=ADNS3080+Optical+Flow+Sensor
http://www.dexsilicium.com/Agilent_188515_ADNB-3081.pdf
These mouse sensor based camera projects are monochrome and yield a low resolution 6 bit image, require electronic and programming skills but may serve in an educational context to illustrate the principles of the digital camera. The sensor spectral response peaks in the red to near infra-red region, so may be interesting if you use the appropriate filters to get the typical black skies and white foliage effect. However, given the very low resolution this may not be that impressive and it might be worth sticking to images of letters of the alphabet and perhaps peoples faces?
If you want much higher resolution colour images then maybe a Raspberry Pi camera linked to a Raspberry Pi Zero computer would be the easiest and inexpensive solution? It will capture still or video images and has a HDMI interface for connecting to standard monitors for displaying photos.
Good luck. I haven't built a 'mouse cam' or played with a Raspberry Pi camera system but hope this is useful anyway.