Motorized zoom camera C1_PRO_X18 has two independent stepper motors for Zoom and Focus control. More specifications can be found in the documentation area. By design, this varifocal lens means the focus will be lost after the magnification motor is moved. However, the lens has linear rail reference points and it is possible to calibrate the lens so it will behave like […]
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 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 MoreRobotic vacuum cleaners compared like never before
It’s been a while since my experiments to analyze robotic vacuum cleaner motion. That time I used Kurokesu C1 camera mounted near the ceiling, recorded motion and ran some simple computer vision algorithms to get live heat map. Result is well described in previous blog record heatmap video of one robot. This time I present […]
Read More3D scanning like a pro
Almost any sensor yields more interesting results if mounted on a moving platform. Remember scanning thermometer? It’s time to mount TOF LIDAR (Time Of Flight / Light Imaging, Detection, And Ranging) on two precision rotary stages arranged for pan and tilt operation. Rig provides real-time position data along with distance to an obstacle. Using simple […]
Read MoreDIY thermal vision shoots 360 panoramas
Like most of you, I do like new technology and spend some money on new parts, sensors, toys, instruments and gadgets. While purchased small toy is on slow route I usually forget about it and remember only after it is delivered. Then item is settled in box proudly named “inbox” and continues it’s existence there […]
Read MoreDumb thermometer gets digital output
Some time ago I purchased 4 channel thermometer. Soon after tried few optical character recognition (OCR) techniques on 7 segment symbols including pytesseract, they worked but I was not happy with results. Few days ago pyimagesearch published article detailing his approach. So I pushed it a bit forward and made solution more robust. Also added […]
Read MoreOpenCV 3 Python blur detection
In order to detect if picture is in focus modern consumer cameras use complicated phase detection circuitry and specialized sensors. But how to determine if captured picture is in focus after it has been taken. Having this measurement information can help in many ways (select best picture in a sequence, control motorized lens, clean time-lapse […]
Read MoreAdvanced OpenCV 3 python hole detection
OpenCV is a well known computer vision library used as base framework used by major companies like Google, IBM, Sony and numerous others. It enables quick vision based tool development and results can be seen in a minutes after starting to code. This time I will show how to find round blobs (for example fiducial […]
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