There are quite a lot of inexpensive and fairly reliable PCB manufacturers that can produce double-sided PCB’s with solder-mask and silkscreen in a day or two, but what if you need it now? I will not cover expensive prototyping machinery nor messy printer/etching process instead let’s use a 20W Fiber laser. Because… who does not […]
Read MorePulling full resolution from a webcam with OpenCV (Windows)
OpenCV while being the most popular tool for a lot of machine vision applications it relies on a third party and some poorly maintained code. Capturing MJPEG compressed video from a UVC USB camera was always the case and it did not work or worked with some issues. This situation is especially bad for Windows OS. […]
Read MoreMeasure linear rail quality with camera and excel
No matter how precise and rigid your mechanical system is, it will always have some imperfections. These imperfections can be measured and described. If measurements show opposite it means your measurement tools are not precise enough or you are doing it wrong. There are a lot of expensive and highly specialized tools to measure every […]
Read MoreUVC camera exposure timing in OpenCV
USB cameras can have the exposure set to manual (cheaper ones have only full auto mode). It’s a pretty straight forward function in OpenCV, but insufficiently documented thus hard to find exact times and calculations. Also there are two major implementations for Linux and Windows. Linux – exposure times are set in units 1/s (all […]
Read MoreC920 rework kit updates
Recently updated C920 webcam version was released featuring new PCB. These changes introduced two unexpected issues: wiring is different and new PCB has mechanical interference with aluminium rework kit back plate. Test-point locations If you rework webcam by yourself, please use pin-out diagram as pictured below to solder wires. TP24 – VCC TP26 – USB […]
Read MoreHow to capture 30fps with Kurokesu cameras in David-3D
When talk comes about 3D scanning everybody knows David-3D software. It’s a pity but it lacks trivial camera control options like selecting MJPEG mode and stuck in YUYV uncompressed mode, this limits performance to low frame rate (about 5 fps). David-3D software does not like it and refuses to scan. It was an issue and […]
Read MoreWhich USB to COM port is the most recent one?
How many times did you find yourself looking for Windows Control Panel and wondering which is the most recent plugged USB to SERIAL com port? Well simple and clean Python script comes very handy for this task. Just start a script and plug in new device – new com port will be displayed with minimal […]
Read MorePedestrian detection using YOLOv3
Owning a quality camera can be fairly useful by itself. Video stream can provide a lot of information not easily comprehendable by just using various sensors. However, not always there is a human eye to make a sense of it. Therefore, additional algorithms can be implemented to provide a lot of insights automatically. A lot […]
Read MoreAccurately measure height with microscope
As the subject implies this post describes a way to measure the height of an object using the motorized microscope. The whole trick is to take many incremental pictures of an object (and background as a reference) from different heights and analyze how sharp each frame is. Some interesting hardware is needed, but nothing that […]
Read MoreSecond life for x18 motorized lens
Had this 18x (5.4-96mm focal distance) salvaged zoom lens in my “inbox” for a while. Finally made it “tick” again with C1 camera and motorized lens controller. Replacing imager was a matter of unscrewing old one and screwing on C1 PCB – mounting hole spacing matched. And talking of controller – it was not even […]
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