Posted Jul 28th 2008 7:09AM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: digital cameras hacks, peripherals hacks, daily
[Eduard] sent in his
IR webcam whiteboard project. He wanted something like the
Wiimote version, but without the expense of a Wiimote. He added some film negative to the camera to reduce the amount of visible light picked up by the CCD. (He notes that you might need to pull the IR filter from your camera to get a decent signal.) The pen is the usual IR LED with a power supply. To do the actual work, he wrote a custom application in Java.
Posted Jul 25th 2008 6:50PM by Benjamin Eckel
Filed under: digital cameras hacks, news, security hacks
The Target Project is a graduate project from the Royal College of Arts in London. It is designed to make us question our
relationship with surveillance technology and CCTV. This is a particularly meaningful demonstration for a country like Britain which is said to contain up to
4.2 million CCTV cameras or roughly 1 for every 14 people.
This project has two demonstrations on their site. The first is dubbed the RTS-2 (Racial Targeting System). This system is essentially a camera which follows faces and is able to analyze and interpret the person's race. The second is SOLA. This system is able to quickly scan someone and calculate their body mass index then publish this information to the web. Both systems achieve their goal by blatantly pointing out a line in which more surveillance does not equate to more security. They also show the wealth of personal data that can be obtained about a person by a simple camera.
[via
we make money not art]
Posted Jul 7th 2008 2:30PM by Juan Aguilar
Filed under: digital cameras hacks
So you got CHDK
working on your camera, and the histograms, raw image files, variable shutter speeds and other added functions are amazing, but stereo imaging is what you really want. If you have two or more CHDK-ready cameras, it's cheap and easy to run
StereoData Maker, a system that synchronizes the shutter and flash of multiple cameras.
The first step in getting SDM to work is installing the software on your SD card. You'll need to find the correct version for you camera; a list is available on the main SDM page. If you are running Windows XP or Vista, run the installer in the zip file. Otherwise, load the files on the SD card and run the installer directly from the camera. Then decide whether this will be the right or left camera and repeat the steps for your second camera.
Next, you'll need to prepare a switch unit, essentially a set of synchronized USB remotes. There are many
ready made commercial units available, but building one on your own shouldn't be much trouble, and a few ideas are provided on the SDM instruction page.
You're basically ready to start shooting stereo images, just take a few test shots to get used to it and to customize the configuration on the cameras.
Posted Jul 1st 2008 11:00PM by Juan Aguilar
Filed under: digital cameras hacks
Flip cameras are fun and easy to use, but not particularly versatile. If you've had poor results at macrophotography with a Flip, you might be interested in
these DIY lenses. One is macroscopic lens for taking photos and video of small things, and the other is a microscope for even smaller things.
To construct the macro lens, you'll need a pair of binoculars, some rubber bands and paper clips. Simply remove the lenses from the front of the binoculars, complete with the plastic casings that hold them. Thread a rubber band folded in half to the plastic casing and hold it in place with small segments from the paper clip. Now place the lens in front of the Flip's lens and secure the rubber band around the flip.
The microscope's eyepiece uses no such attachment method, simply hold it in front of the Flip. The same process can't be used here because getting the proper focus requires it to be held at varying distances from the camera, not flush against it like the macro lens. In any case, it's any easy mod that should have you taking pictures of bugs and other tiny things in no time. Look after the break for video of the lenses in action.
Continue reading Flip camera microscope and macro lenses
Posted Jun 30th 2008 11:59PM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: digital cameras hacks
Hack-A-Day friend [Nathan] showed us some of his results creating his own High Dynamic Range images. Three normal Low Dynamic Range photos. One is under exposed, one is normal and the third is over exposed to capture the information needed. Then all three are used to create a single HDR image. Technically, the HDR image contains too much information to properly display, but even this limited version looks damn impressive.
You'll need a tripod, a camera that allows you to adjust your exposure value and a decent CPU to do the processing. (This pic took a couple of minutes to render on a quad core cpu) You can check out the full HDR photo
here and one of the original frames
here. For the software side, you can use
pfstools on the command line or
QtpfsGUI for the graphics side - both are free and open source. [Nathan] suggests a camera with bracket mode and a remote shutter release for best results. If you're all about theory, you can grab a white paper on the process
here.
Posted Jun 30th 2008 11:43PM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: digital cameras hacks
We just ordered up a new
ATC3K video camera from Oregon Scientific for some, uh projects. (No, not our new porn site.) If you've got one of the older ATC2K cams, you can mod it a bit to avoid dropping another C-note on the new model. [Carlos] wrote up
his mod to remove and replace the original narrow lens with a wide angle fisheye lens. The install requires some significant effort and some case modding - probably not a good idea if the waterproof feature is dear to you.
Posted Jun 30th 2008 7:55PM by Juan Aguilar
Filed under: digital cameras hacks
Droplet photography (link translated from French) often produces simple and beautiful images, but timing the exposure can be tricky. Snapping the photo too early or too late can cause you to miss the action, which only lasts a fraction of a second. EquinoxeFR (the people behind the
Asus WL500GP audio hack) came up with a solution to this problem using a circuit with an ATmega168 running an Arduino environment. The circuit controls a syringe that contains a liquid and is triggered remotely to release a drop into a darkened chamber. A camera with the shutter open is attached to the chamber, and before the droplet hits, it crosses an IR sensor that triggers the flash to go off a few milliseconds later, capturing the unique crown shape of the impact. No schematic is available as yet, but comments at the bottom of the post suggest one will be coming soon.
Posted Jun 30th 2008 7:47AM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: digital cameras hacks, daily
This particular unit has been de-commissioned since 2005, but it's still interesting. JACARA set up a
webcam on Antarctica. They used an off the shelf Axis NetEye200 camera, mounted it inside a pair of hemispherical plastic domes along with a small electric heater and thermostat to keep the device from freezing.
Posted Jun 29th 2008 7:11AM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: digital cameras hacks, daily
We've seen plenty of lens hacks, but [Koray] took things in a
new direction. Rather than buy lens chips for modding all of his manual lenses, he added a lens chip inside his Digital Rebel 300D (aka
XT). Most of us might cringe at gutting their Rebel, but he performed this bit of soldering surgery on a unit he picked up for £40 and repaired. Excellent work!
Update: yeah yeah, the 300D is the original Digital Rebel.
Posted Jun 27th 2008 7:42AM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: digital cameras hacks, daily
This fantastically huge housing was put together by [Ed Sauer]. He put it together using TIG welded 6061 aluminum for the body and machined the port mount out of 7075 aluminum. The lens port is a commercial unit from a housing manufacturer along with a few manual controls. He wrote up the build in
this pdf.
Posted Jun 20th 2008 7:46AM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: digital cameras hacks, daily
Underwater camera housings work great - but they are prone to humidity, dirt and dust problems if you open them more often than needed. In order to download the images off of his digital camera between dives, [Matt] decided to
add a waterproof external USB port to his housing. He had an extra 5 pin strobe bulkhead installed by Ikelite (makers of excellent housings). Then he spliced on a mini-usb cable for the camera and spliced a standard USB end onto a strobe cable. During dives, the port is closed with an o-ring sealed cap.
Posted Jun 17th 2008 8:28AM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: digital cameras hacks, daily
The idea of using servos to aim a telescope isn't new, but [John]'s
build looks so much like a prop from
Johnny Mnemomic that we can't resist posting it. The goal isn't so much remote control as it is usability. He added a webcam and a pair of servos to help him fine focus and adjust the elevation of the scope to minimize vibration during those sensitive operations.
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