[HN Gopher] Show HN: Modular Pi Cam
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Show HN: Modular Pi Cam
This is the third camera I've designed/made around the raspberry pi
parts/ecosystem. The repo has all the STL files, parts list, most
wiring diagrams. The first one was the custom Pi Zero HQ cam which
was featured on a Hackaday article/podcast. The modular version
(aside from being able to swap cameras) mostly has the latest
software. Recently I added the ability to process videos in the
background (ffmpeg merges wav/mp4 files together). The camera uses
crop-zoom-panning for dialing in shots with manual lenses. The menu
is created by layering images/text with PIL. Live preview is a
little slow as it's SPI based. If anybody is a pro at python I'd
appreciate insight on better code. I've mostly just followed a
context-based folder layout regarding where everything is. I have
not added custom/manual settings yet, it uses auto settings for the
most part except for when you use a V3 camera module (which has
electronic aperture) then it uses the d-pad to set the
focus/diopter value. I have another camera in mind/future build
although it's more tailored for videos. Some sample video I've
shot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkjXkQD0j9w Assembly video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXG-MoIw93Q At some point I will
rewrite the code for a new general purpose DIY camera software from
what I've learned, that'll be an undertaking.
Author : jcun4128
Score : 37 points
Date : 2024-06-19 17:16 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| dheera wrote:
| I just really wish Raspberry Pi would come out with a truly HQ
| camera with a full frame 35mm sensor, or at least an APS-C
| sensor. I'd pay $1000-1500 for it, just to have something as good
| as a full frame camera but programmable and hackable.
|
| I would _love_ to build a full frame mirrorless camera that runs
| my own UI. I 'm pretty sure I could code a much more advanced UI
| than Sony or Canon.
|
| Their current HQ camera is more like an LQ camera and there is
| not a huge variety of high quality photographic lenses available
| for it.
| jcun4128 wrote:
| I have seen some people work on a Kodak sensor and also Cine
| Pi's latest work with the IMX585 sensor is really amazing
| (4K/8K upscaled). The IMX585 sensor is expensive though
| compared to the HQ Cam IMX477. Here I'm using the Pi Zero 2
| here so can't do 4K I believe (data lanes limit or something,
| also writing to SD card).
|
| Kodak sensor https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ma9FrN5COIo
|
| Recent CinePi work
| https://youtu.be/tI7hIKG1v40?si=BUvOOGutQJDnv09q&t=177
|
| I'm not affiliated with CinePi I'm just amazed what you can do
| when you know what you're doing ha (eg. color grading)
| buildbot wrote:
| Thanks for the link to the Kodak sensor - that's awesome,
| because those sensors have a fairly common interface across
| all the other Kodak sensors like the 48x36mm Medium format
| 22MP sensors... It would be pretty easy to adapt this project
| to make your own CCD medium format camera!
| jcun4128 wrote:
| Another good link
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QQx0G5MR3k
|
| Trying to find this one where a guy made a sensor stack
| from scratch it wasn't great like 1 MP but still amazing
|
| This one open source USB 3 camera damn!
|
| https://www.circuitvalley.com/2022/06/pensource-usb-c-
| indust...
| inhumantsar wrote:
| Breaking Taps had a video not long ago covering his
| efforts to design and fab his own image sensor, though it
| didn't work and it wouldn't have been anywhere near 1MP
| even if it had.
| jcun4128 wrote:
| I watched that, was amazing, those kind of creators like
| Applied Science are on another level.
| ipsum2 wrote:
| CinePi didn't develop the hardware, that's Will Whang's
| (https://www.willwhang.dev/OneInchEye/) work.
| jcun4128 wrote:
| Ah I did not know that, thanks
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Check out Will Whang's work: https://www.willwhang.dev
|
| He and the developer of the Pieca camera
| (https://teaandtechtime.com/pieca-a-raspberry-pi-camera-
| syste...) have both been tinkering with 1" sensors, which seems
| to be the current limit for what kind of sensor works okay with
| the Pi's CSI interface.
|
| I haven't found a larger sensor that is available to mere
| mortals yet, but it would be neat to get to 35mm someday.
| michaelt wrote:
| I suspect the price point the Raspberry Pi targets isn't easily
| compatible with a truly high quality camera.
|
| As I understand things, the Pi has a single lane of CSI at
| maybe 1.5 Gbps. That's enough for 1080p video, it's not enough
| for 4k video.
|
| A high-end smartphone, on the other hand, has more like 5 Gbps
| of bandwidth to the camera, and the processing power needed to
| deal with that much data. But the device cost is 10x what an
| RPi costs, so they can afford it.
| jcun4128 wrote:
| Here is a write up on topics covered by these camera iterations
|
| https://medium.com/@jdc-cunningham/making-a-user-interface-f...
|
| A lot of pictures and full menu map
|
| And MS paint wiring diagrams
|
| (1st camera) https://github.com/jdc-cunningham/pi-zero-hq-
| cam/tree/master...
|
| (2nd camera orange) https://github.com/jdc-cunningham/modular-pi-
| cam/blob/master...
| daniel_reetz wrote:
| Nice work! What's the boot time like? I didn't see it in your
| Medium page.
| jcun4128 wrote:
| It's slow haha. Faster on the Pi Zero 2 with bookworm. I
| think it's 20-30 seconds.
|
| I use systemd to run main.py let me time it real quick.
|
| Edit: I was off, it's 40 seconds when the intro animation
| starts playing.
|
| This is why the camera spends most of its time in the home
| screen state until you're ready to take a photo which is when
| the live pass through plays or while recording a video
| (allows you to change focus/aperture while filming). That
| also conserves power since it has the highest current draw
| while recording/showing a live preview.
| atlas_hugged wrote:
| Try alpine to slim it down?
| gruturo wrote:
| Did anyone have any luck capturing stereoscopic videos at any
| meaningful quality? This used to be only possible with the Pi
| Compute module (unobtainium for a very long time) but the Pi5
| finally exposes both camera ports.... while also dropping
| hardware encoding, which is likely to be a huge roadblock since I
| doubt there's enough CPU power + bandwidth to compress 2 4K
| streams at 60fps in realtime and store it. And I'd love to go
| even higher actually.
|
| The official forums are surprisingly devoid of anyone trying
| this, which is not super encouraging.
|
| I'd really like to experiment in doing some underwater VR180
| photo/videography, I promise to share the results if anyone has
| any useful pointers (not strictly rPi related, but other
| platforms are even less promising. Happy for any unexpected hints
| tho!)
|
| (Sorry for the barely-on-topic (if not outright offtopic)) but
| this is a rare chance to tap into HN's hive mind on this
| particular issue due to a Pi-camera related thread on the front
| page.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| The best hardware option currently is StereoPi:
| https://stereopi.com
|
| But the software has a ways to go, it seems. I wonder if a
| potential CM5 would be able to stream the two video feeds
| better than the CM4.
| gruturo wrote:
| Thanks Jeff!
|
| I had read and promptly forgotten about StereoPi, I'll give
| it another look now that CM4s are no longer impossible to
| get.
|
| Regarding CM5... who knows (Probably you? :-) ) but given the
| loss of hardware encoding I'm keeping my expectations low for
| video at any decent resolution and framerate (unfortunately a
| 2x2064x2208x60fps video is close to 1.5 GB per second, and at
| 72fps (which should really be a minimum) it's 2GB/sec, hardly
| the realm of software encoding, unless I want to bring an
| Epyc/Threadripper underwater and somehow power it from a
| battery.)
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(page generated 2024-06-19 23:00 UTC)