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This looks wonderful! I wish it could be mass produced, with some minor polish. I would throw money at it instantly. If the author is reading this, have you co
by imiric 4y ago
This looks wonderful!
I wish it could be mass produced, with some minor polish. I would throw money at it instantly. If the author is reading this, have you considered crowd sourcing it? It's great that everything is open source, but putting one together is above my skill level.
I'm desperately looking for a hackable webcam that isn't a huge privacy risk. Adding network connectivity to this project probably wouldn't be a large endeavour.
- Xeoncross 4y agoActually, is there any open webcam for home use that doesn't seen all the recordings to some 3rd party? I'm interested too.
- wiml 4y agoSome of the random-commercial-thing-from-China home security cams have open-source replacement firmwares.
- teraflop 4y agoThere are plenty of cheap-ish commodity cameras that use ONVIF to stream video over a LAN. That by itself doesn't guarantee that they aren't also exfiltrating the data somewhere, but you can put them on a firewalled VLAN.
- m463 4y agoyou can make a webcam from a raspberry pi (a case is harder) or you can plug in one or more usb webcams, some of which have good cases.
- AceJohnny2 4y agoAt a guess, this would likely cost in the high-hundreds to thousands of dollars if "mass" produced. "mass" production is really expensive, as you have to add design-for-manufacturability and design-for-testing, and account for yield loss and customer support (how happy would you be if your expensive camera appeared DOA?). At that price-point, are there other devices on the market that already fulfill the need? > Adding network connectivity to this project probably wouldn't be a large endeavour lol
- britneybitch 4y ago> At that price-point, are there other devices on the market that already fulfill the need? No there aren't. Webcams in 2022 all have miniscule lenses/sensors paired with decade-old tech and none of the big players seem interested in producing anything higher quality. https://reincubate.com/support/how-to/why-are-webcams-bad/ https://reincubate.com/support/how-to/why-are-webcams-bad/ If you want high-quality video capture, your options are pretty much just (1) plug in a "real" $$$$ DSLR/mirrorless camera which will be fiddly and prone to overheating, or (2) use a cell phone as an IP camera, which will add noticeable latency and is still a tiny sensor compensated for by AI. If this was for sale fully assembled I'd easily spend a few hundred on it. I don't care about networking, just give me plain old USB.
- 542458 4y agoThere is another option: You can buy relatively high quality PTZ cameras designed for low-end broadcast (HoW and legislative mostly). Some will output to USB, at the higher end you’ll need to capture SDI, NDI, or 2110. I have a coworker with this setup and it’s easily the best video quality I’ve ever seen on a teams call even in his fairly dark room.
- joshspankit 4y agoI’d ask you to find and share the model number they used, but I feel like it would be OOS by the time I remembered to look, then come back at 3-6X the price.
- fellowmartian 4y agoThere's no way stuff like this will ever be mass produced, but it's actually not that difficult to assemble this. You'd need: - Find components from Mouser/DigiKey/etc - Order PCBs w/ a stencil from JLCPCB/PCBWay - USB-C Mini Hot Plate - Pinecil/TS100/TS101 soldering iron w/ a set of fine tips - Soldering paste, regular solder, flux, IPA, old tooth brush, magnifying glass w/ light - Steady hands Then you apply solder paste over the stencil to the top side with all the chips, put components on, and reflow on the hot plate. You solder the rest of the components on the back with soldering iron and flux. Overall the whole set is gonna cost you ~300 bucks (provided the components are not crazy expensive). But you'll have a pretty advanced electronics setup AND an open-source camera.
- TaylorAlexander 4y agoI have done lots of fine pitch SMT hand assembly at home with stencils etc. But I do see this has lots of BGA chips and I'm not sure how easy those are (I've never done them).
- joshspankit 4y agoBGA seems scary, but it’s not bad: with the proper amount of solder it “self-aligns” just like any other SMD component. Even a little more precisely because of all the contact points.
- LoganDark 4y agoAFAIK, reflowing a BGA chip without fucking it up is difficult without a temperature-controlled reflow station.
- circuitvalley 4y agoSoldering BGA is the easiest part, You just need good hotair. While soldering connectors are hardest. They melt , do not self alging and many other problems
- 4y ago
- ChuckMcM 4y agoConsider the OpenMV[1] camera, I have several of these and find them very useful for everything from simple vision control for robots to automated face detection. I turned one into a license plate reader and had it identify plates that drove down my street. All very versatile. [1] https://openmv.io/products/openmv-cam-h7-plus https://openmv.io/products/openmv-cam-h7-plus
- wmf 4y agoOpenMV seems to be targeting completely different use cases where the image never leaves the camera (because OpenMV doesn't have any usable I/O to get video out of the board).
- joshspankit 4y agoI wonder if it could be adjusted so that it can be ordered assembled through a place like JLCPCB. Then you could get the PCBs, order your choice of 3D printed enclosure, add the lens, assemble it and be done.
- mhb 4y agoI'm desperately looking for a hackable webcam that isn't a huge privacy risk RPi is no good for that? If they are available.
- beambot 4y agoThe OpenCV OAK series of cameras are fun to play with: https://store.opencv.ai/ https://store.opencv.ai/
- circuitvalley 4y agoI am the Developer behind this camera. Camera as is not very productionable because of manufacturing related issues. There will be Third revision of this camera coming in few months. I am working on absolute new hardware with lots of improvement in image quality.